DETERMINANTS OF DIVIDEND DISTRIBUTION IN BRAZIL: AN ANALYSIS BETWEEN FINANCIAL FLEXIBILITY AND RESULTS DISTRIBUTION POLICY

Abstract

Among other important themes, financial flexibility has gained attention from the financial literature. It is discussed that the capacity of the company in appealing promptly to the debt market be the major subsidy to obtain the flexibility, making the company enjoy viable investment opportunities and maximize its value. It should also be pointed out, that few empirical studies have analyzed the influence of flexibility on financial decisions and existing research has shown that financial flexibility plays a significant role in the distribution of business dividends. Thus, the objective of this research was to analyze the influence on financial flexibility, exercised in the form of debt capacity, in the distribution of dividends in the Brazilian companies. The hypothetical-deductive method was used, using bibliographical and documentary research. For this purpose, 614 open capital companies were analyzed with data available in Economática in the period between 2011 and 2016. In econometric terms, it was opted for the use of multivariate regression with panel data, being used regression models Tobit and Probit. The results indicated that the companies holding debt capacity distribute a larger volume of dividends, according to the research hypothesis. In an additional way, the results demonstrated that the major companies, more profitable, more liquid and with greater growth opportunities distribute more dividends, while more indebtedness companies, with greater amount of investment and with more volatile results distribute a smaller portion of their results corroborating with the literature.