Purpose This paper empirically examines the catering theory of Baker and Wurgler (2004) in the particular context of France. Considering the characteristics of French market – known for its high concentration of capital – it attempts to highlight the role family control plays in the managerial tendencies to satisfy non-informative dividend demands. Design/methodology/approach The paper focuses on a large data set of French firms included in the SBF-250 index over a period of 1992-2010. It uses a variety of dividend policy measures, including dividend premium, percentage of dividend-paying firms and probability of paying dividends. It adopts appropriate empirical specifications (time-series and probit models) to substantiate the research hypotheses. Findings The empirical findings show that the percentage of payers rises with the dividend premium, and that the dividend premium and the confidence index of French households are negatively correlated. This reflects the sensitivity of dividend demand to investor sentiment. Moreover, results of multivariate panel regression show a positive and statistically significant effect of the dividend premium on the firm’s tendency to pay, after controlling for firm characteristics. Finally, it finds that the dividend premium effect disappears in the case of family-controlled firms. This result is in line with the long-term orientation of family firms. Research limitations/implications The study focuses on the dividend payment behavior of French firms. Although dividends are deeply engrained in France, authors believe that it will be interesting to look at the whole payout policy and particularly the role played by share repurchases. Practical implications Addressing short-term catering and managerial opportunism, the results of this study may be of interest for shareholders, potential investors and regulators. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that provides empirical evidence on Baker and Wurgler (2004) catering theory by considering the particularity of French market where, unlike the US, percentage of dividend-paying firms is high and the corporate ownership structures are different.

Background: Fama and French propose a five-factor model that contains the market factor and factors related to size, book-to-market equity ratio, profitability, and investment, which outperforms the Fama-French Three-Factor Model in their paper in 2014. This study investigates the performance of Fama-French Five-Factor Model and compare with that of Fama-French Three-Factor Model on Chinese Ashare stock market. Methods: Portfolios are constructed following Fama and French method. The OLS is applied to running time-series regressions; the t-statistics of regression coefficients are corrected for heteroscedasticity and autocorrelation using the Newey-West estimator with five lags. Results: The empirical results show that Fama-French Five-Factor Model explanatory power has differences among different sets of portfolios. In comparison with FamaFrench Three-Factor Model, the presence of profitability and investment factors seem not to capture more variations of expected stock returns than the three-factor model except for six value-weighted portfolios formed on size and operating profitability. Conclusions: Profitability and investment factors do not have much additional explanatory power, and Fama-French Five-Factor Model does not have significant improvement in explaining average excess stock returns comparing with the original three-factor model on Chinese A-share stock market, which is inconsistent with the findings on US stock market.

The aim of this paper is to test the relationship between average returns and beta of French stocks over the last six years (1990-1995). Numerous and contradictory studies recently published in the American literature have cast doubts as to whether beta plays a role at all when it comes to explaining average returns on the American Stock Exchange (e.g. Fama and French, 1992; Pettengill et al., 1995). As the results obtained seem to depend upon the methodology used, we propose to implement some of the methodological advances advocated in these recent papers to test for the usefulness of beta as a determinant of returns on the French Stock Exchange. This subject has not been dealt with in recent literature.

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En utilisant la méthode des doubles différences sur un échantillon de 3 447 fusions-acquisitions (F&A) américaines de 1990 à 2009, nous examinons les relations entre la déréglementation bancaire américaine, la stabilité bancaire et la consolidation via ces processus de rapprochements. Dans l’ensemble, la consolidation liée aux fusions-acquisitions aux États-Unis est positivement liée à la déréglementation bancaire, même si les effets individuels des actes de déréglementation visant à favoriser la diversité fonctionnelle et la diversité géographique sont assez mitigés. Ces résultats, très marqués sur l’analyse de la période pré-crise, disparaissent pendant la phase de crise financière. Enfin, la déréglementation et la consolidation ont conjointement des effets négatifs sur la stabilité des banques américaines, confirmant ainsi le fait que la déréglementation est en partie responsable de la crise financière de 2007.