The higher taxation of dividends in the United States gave rise to theories that explain why companies pay dividends. Tax-based signaling models propose that the higher tax on dividends is a necessary condition to make them informative about companies' values. In Germany, where dividends are not tax-disadvantaged and in fact are taxed lower for most investor classes, these models predict that dividends are not informative. However, we find that the stock price reaction to dividend news in Germany is similar to that found in the United States. This suggests other reasons, beyond taxation, that make dividends informative. THE U.S.-CENTRIC VIEW OF dividends reflects the tax regime there which disfavors dividends.1 Central in this view is the "dividend puzzle" (Black (1976)): if dividends are taxed higher than capital gains, why do companies pay such high cash dividends-about 50 percent of net income in the United States? One explanation suggests that it is the higher tax on dividends that makes them informative about the companies' future values (Bhattacharya (1979), John and Williams (1985), Bernheim (1991), and Bernheim and Wantz (1995)). By these models, dividend news would not be informative if not for the higher tax that they impose on shareholders.In Germany, the tax system is different from the one in the United States. Until recently, the allocation to dividends of corporate earnings did not impose higher taxes on shareholders. For most investors, taxes on earnings allocated to dividends were lower than they would be if earnings were retained, the stock price appreciated accordingly and shareholders realized capital gains when selling the stock. Given that the necessary conditions for a tax-based signaling * 1 During a short period, following the 1986 Tax Reform Act, the tax rates on both sources of income was equalized, but investors could defer the realization of capital gains, so the effective tax on capital gains was lower.
398The Journal of Finance equilibrium are not satisfied in Germany, there is the question of whether dividend news conveys information about companies' values. If stock prices in Germany react positively to dividend news, it would suggest that higher taxation of dividends is not necessary to make them informative. In addition, if the higher taxation on dividends in the United States is supposed to inhibit dividends, there is a question of whether the lower tax on dividends in Germany induces higher dividend payouts. These questions are answered below.The rest of the article is organized as follows. We present the tax regime in Germany in Section I. The empirical results are presented in Section II. In Section III, we conclude and discuss possible means that drive the reaction of stock prices to dividend news.