Some prior studies show that firms in high corruption countries tend to save more cash in order to make unofficial payments. This implies that managers in a corrupt environment are more flexible to use firms’ cash. Therefore, managers may take advantage of this opportunity to expropriate shareholders by restricting dividend policy. However, other studies find that shareholders may recognize this expropriation behavior and thus shareholders in countries of high corruption pressure managers to pay more dividends. In this paper, we investigate how local corruption influences dividend policy in Vietnam — an emerging market with weak corporate governance. Using a sample of 5,160 observations from firms listed in Vietnamese stock market from 2007 to 2017, we find that local corruption positively affects both the likelihood to pay dividends and payout ratio. Moreover, our research findings show that state ownership mitigates this effect and this effect is stronger in financial unconstrained firms.

先前的一些研究表明，高腐败国家的公司倾向于节省更多现金以进行非官方付款。这意味着在腐败环境中的经理人更灵活地使用公司的现金。因此，管理人员可以利用这一机会通过限制股利政策来侵占股东。但是，其他研究发现，股东可能会认识到这种征用行为，因此，在腐败压力高的国家/地区，股东可以支付更多的股利。在本文中，我们研究了当地腐败如何影响越南的股息政策，越南是一个公司治理薄弱的新兴市场。使用2007年至2017年越南股市上市公司的5,160项观察数据样本，我们发现，本地腐败对支付股息的可能性和支付比率都有积极影响。此外，我们的研究结果表明，国有制可以减轻这种影响，并且这种影响在不受财务约束的公司中更为明显。