The aim of the article is to analyse the functions that dividends perform in contractual relationships between public companies’ executives and shareholders. The author analyses the income function of dividend, but also considers its sociological aspects. Talcott Parsons' social system theory is the main point of reference, especially, the concept of contract institution. The article justifies the thesis on the relevance of dividends in shaping the equilibrium of power, information policy and the composition of shareholders in a joint-stock company. Dividend policy has a great regulatory potential, which is important in the face of various crises occurring in contemporary capitalism.

In this paper, we solve exit problems for a one-sided Markov additive process (MAP) which is exponentially killed with a bivariate killing intensity $\omega(\cdot,\cdot)$ dependent on the present level of the process and the current state of the environment. Moreover, we analyze the respective resolvents. All identities are expressed in terms of new generalizations of classical scale matrices for MAPs. We also remark on a number of applications of the obtained identities to (controlled) insurance risk processes. In particular, we show that our results can be applied to the Omega model, where bankruptcy takes place at rate $\omega(\cdot,\cdot)$ when the surplus process becomes negative. Finally, we consider Markov-modulated Brownian motion (MMBM) as a special case and present analytical and numerical results for a particular choice of piecewise intensity function $\omega(\cdot,\cdot)$ .

In Nigeria, corporate law and practice are still evolving. Consequently, there is scant literature on some major aspects of corporate law. The focus of this study is on one such area covering dividends and other forms of corporate distribution. In addition to the lack of constructive legal literature on company dividends and other forms of corporate distribution in Nigeria, most of Nigeria's corporate participants and policymakers are still largely uninformed of the fundamental rules and principles on company dividends. Motivated by the foregoing, this research critically examines the theoretical rationale and extant legal principles on company dividends. Its main objectives are to close the gap in the literature and to provoke scholarly discourse that may further enrich policy reform measures in the area of company dividends in Nigeria.

In this paper, we revisit the Earnings, Cover (the ratio of earnings over dividends) and Price/Earnings (P/E) Ratio models which we introduced in Part 4 of this series. Although we suggested that the significant decline in the Earnings Index over 2015-2016 might be followed by dividends and share prices, this has not happened. Instead, Earnings have risen substantially over the years 2016 to 2018. Therefore, we revise our models based on the updated data and compare the new set of models with the one in Part 4 as well as with themselves. We then compare different methods for forecasting Dividends and Share Prices.

De Finetti’s optimal dividend problem has recently been extended to the case when dividend payments can be made only at Poisson arrival times. In this paper we consider the version with bail-outs where the surplus must be nonnegative uniformly in time. For a general spectrally negative Lévy model, we show the optimality of a Parisian-classical reflection strategy that pays the excess above a given barrier at each Poisson arrival time and also reflects from below at 0 in the classical sense.

We consider a profitable, risky setting with two separate, correlated asset and liability processes (first introduced by Gerber and Shiu, 2003). The company that is considered is allowed to distribute excess profits (traditionally referred to as dividends in the literature), but is regulated and is subject to particular regulatory (solvency) constraints. Because of the bivariate nature of the surplus formulation, such distributions of excess profits can take two alternative forms. These can originate from a reduction of assets (and hence a payment to owners), but also from an increase of liabilities (when these represent the wealth of owners, such as in pension funds). The latter is particularly relevant if distributions of assets do not make sense because of the context, such as in regulated pension funds where assets are locked until retirement. In this paper, we extend the model of Gerber and Shiu (2003) and consider recovery requirements for the distribution of excess funds. Such recovery requirements are an extension of the plain vanilla solvency constraints considered in Paulsen (2003), and require funds to reach a higher level of funding than the solvency level (if and after it is triggered) before excess funds can be distributed again. We obtain closed-form expressions for the expected present value of distributions (asset decrements or liability increments) when a distribution barrier is used.

We consider an insurance entity endowed with an initial capital and a surplus process modelled as a Brownian motion with drift. It is assumed that the company seeks to maximise the cumulated value of expected discounted dividends, which are declared or paid in a foreign currency. The currency fluctuation is modelled as a Lévy process. We consider both cases: restricted and unrestricted dividend payments. It turns out that the value function and the optimal strategy can be calculated explicitly.

We study the dual model with capital injection under the additional condition that the dividend strategy is absolutely continuous. We consider a refraction–reflection strategy that pays dividends at the maximal rate whenever the surplus is above a certain threshold, while capital is injected so that it stays non-negative. The resulting controlled surplus process becomes the spectrally positive version of the refracted–reflected process recently studied by Pérez and Yamazaki (2015). We study various fluctuation identities of this process and prove the optimality of the refraction–reflection strategy. Numerical results on the optimal dividend problem are also given.

In the classical optimal dividends problem, dividend decisions are allowed to be made at any point in time — according to a continuous strategy. Depending on the surplus process that is considered and whether dividend payouts are bounded or not, optimal strategies are generally of a band, barrier or threshold type. In reality, while surpluses change continuously, dividends are generally paid on a periodic basis. Because of this, the actuarial literature has recently considered strategies where dividends are only allowed to be distributed at (random) discrete times — according to a periodic strategy.

In this paper, we focus on the Brownian risk model. In this context, the optimal continuous and periodic strategies have previously been shown (independently of one another) to be of barrier type. For the first time, we consider a model where both strategies are used. In such a hybrid strategy, decisions are allowed to be made either at any time (continuously), or periodically at a lower cost. This proves optimal in some cases. We also determine under which combination of parameters a pure continuous, pure periodic or hybrid (including both continuous and periodic dividend payments) barrier strategy is optimal. Interestingly, the hybrid strategy lies in-between periodic and continuous strategies, which provides some interesting insights. Results are illustrated.

Consider a spectrally negative risk process where, on ruin, the deficit is immediately paid, and the process restarts from 0. When the process reaches a threshold b, all the surplus above b is paid as dividend. Applying the theory of exit times for a spectrally negative Lévy process and its reflection at the maximum and at the minimum, we obtain recursive formulae for the following moments. (i) The moments of the discounted loss until the process reaches b. This is equivalent to the moments of the discounted dividends in the dual model under the barrier strategy. (ii) The moments of the discounted loss for models with and without a dividend barrier for the infinite horizon. (iii) The moments of the discounted dividends for the infinite horizon.

We consider the optimal dividend control problem to find an optimal strategy under the constraint that dividend rates is restricted such that the expected total discounted dividends are maximized for an insurance company. The evolution of the reserve is modeled by a diffusion process with drift and volatility coefficients modulated by an observable Markov chain. We consider the regime-switching threshold strategy which pays out dividends at the maximal possible rate when the current reserve is above some critical level dependent on the regime of the Markov chain at the time, and pays nothing when the reserve is below that level. We give sufficient conditions under which such type of strategy is optimal for the regime-switching model.