Abstract—The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether foreign firms in Bangladesh paid higher dividend during subprime crisis. A balanced panel data set of fifty-five non-financial firms (nine foreign and 46 local) of Bangladesh for 10 (2002-2011) years from the Dhaka Stock Exchange is used for this study. The specified model has the cash dividend payout as the dependent variable and profitability, external shareholding, growth in GDP, and two dummy variables as explanatory variables. Newey-West estimator is used to estimate the regression equation. Profitability, external shareholding, GDP growth and the dummy variable for foreign firms turned out to be significant. In addition, stability test based on recursive estimation (recursive least squares) was used to visually check for structural break in recursive coefficient graphs which indicated no significant change in dividend payout pattern of foreign firms around subprime crisis.

Index Terms—dividend payout, emerging economy, subprime crisis, Newey-West estimator, agency cost, asymmetric information theory

Cite: Sharif N. Ahkam, Shahzada M. Imran, and Syeda M. Hossain, "Did Foreign Firms in Bangladesh Pay Higher Dividend during Subprime Crisis? An Investigation," Journal of Advanced Management Science, Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 76-82, March 2014. doi: 10.12720/joams.2.1.76-82