Excerpt from Dividend Behavior for the Aggregate Stock Market In this paper, we develop a model of the dividend process for the aggregate stock market. Previous research has focused almost exclusively on dividend behavior at the micro level of the individual firm. Hence, to motivate the focus here on aggregate dividend behavior, we begin with a brief review of these earlier micro studies, this to be followed by a discussion which locates the place of our aggregate analysis within this body of research. In Sections 2-5, we derive and fit our econometric model of the dividend process. In Section 6, we compare the performance of the model with other models in the literature. Although long a staple of financial management textbooks, corporate dividend policy remains a topic on which the field has failed to arrive at even a local sense of closure. Fischer Black (1976) has aptly described this lack of closure as the "dividend puzzle." The pivotal point in this puzzle is the classical work of Miller and Modigliani (1961) which demonstrated the irrelevance of dividend policy for determining the firm's cost of capital. Miller and Modigliani showed that when investors can create any payout pattern they want by selling and purchasing shares, the expected return required to induce them to hold these shares will be invariant to the way in which firms "package" gross dividend payments and new issues of stock (and/or other zero net present value transactions). Since neither the firm's expected future net cash flows nor its discount rate is affected by the choice of dividend policy per se, its current market value cannot be changed by a change in that policy. Thus, dividend policy "does not matter." About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.