Abstract:

The study below is aimed at determining the existence of correlation and the degree of correlation of the dividend payout of different stock markets across Asia and Europe with the Dow Jones Dividend Select 30 indices respectively. Most of the current studies around dividend payouts are anchored around its viability for companies and to tackle issue of optimum reserves and surplus as well as agency problem to some extent. In some other cases, it is related to the existent Tax structure of that country and how the variance in dividend is attributed to the same and how it helps the companies with managing their financial resources. However, from a global investor point of view, as a factor of choice among various stock markets to invest, all these studies become limited in scope as they may at best be indicators of a particular sector of the economy at a certain point in time. Through our study we shall endeavour to enlarge the scope of this understanding from the global investor perspective by identifying the existing gaps from the investors’ perspective and aim to bridge the same to provide more structured result oriented model for the investors. This shall benefit the investors at two important levels:

• A more structured indicative approach to study shareholder/investor wealth vis-à-vis a stock market group thus leading to a more informed choice from an investor perspective
• The ability to set realistic expectations on return on investment and to be able to account for the same in a more appropriate way with the least available variance.