Bank dividends are unusually persistent. In a crisis, they exacerbate systemic risk and raise concerns for regulators. Bank managers, however, may keep dividends elevated to mitigate agency conflicts with shareholders. One theory holds that persistent dividends may substitute for monitoring by dispersed shareholders. A second theory proposes that they attract institutional shareholders who monitor banks, mitigate agency conflicts, and seek to protect their investments’ value. After controlling for regulatory enforcement actions, we test both theories using 7722 bank-quarter observations spanning the 2007–2009 financial crisis. Our results suggest that dividend persistence increases with managerial agency conflicts but decreases in the presence of concentrated institutional shareholders, consistent with the second theory. In addition, contrary to the first theory, dispersed shareholders have no influence on bank dividend policies. Instead, these dispersed shareholders are associated with more frequent stock repurchase programs.

银行股息异常持久。在危机中，它们加剧了系统性风险并引起监管机构的关注。但是，银行经理可能会提高股息，以减轻代理机构与股东之间的冲突。一种理论认为，持续性股息可以代替分散股东的监督。第二种理论认为，它们吸引了监督银行，减轻代理机构冲突并寻求保护其投资价值的机构股东。在控制了监管措施之后，我们使用横跨2007-2009年金融危机的7722个银行季度观察结果对这两种理论进行了检验。我们的结果表明，股利持久性会随着管理机构的冲突而增加，但在存在集中的机构股东的情况下会降低，这与第二种理论一致。此外，与第一种理论相反，分散的股东对银行股息政策没有影响。相反，这些分散的股东与更频繁的股票回购计划相关。