The Determinants of Dividend Policy: A comparison between Firms Listed on the Italian Stock Exchange and on the Warsaw Stock Exchange (2001-2014)

Several theories have been documented on the relevance and irrelevance of dividend policy. Many researchers continue to come up with different findings on the relevance of dividend policy to the value of firms. In this paper, after an analysis of the different payouts offered by the Italian and Polish firms, we aim to understand the main factors that determine the dividend policies of listed companies in Italy and Poland. In order to analyze this policy, we extract data from a wide sample of firms selected from the equity markets of the Italian and Polish stock exchanges. The paper finds that there are many differences between Italian and Polish dividend policies; in particular the dividend payout is mostly determined by the dividend yield and liquidity in Polish firms, while it is heavily influenced by profitability and leverage in Italian firms.