Economic literature suggests that banks change their dividend payouts for three main reasons. They may be willing to signal good future profitability to shareholders to address information asymmetry, or use dividends to mitigate the agency costs, or could come under pressure from prudential supervisors and regulators to retain earnings. The COVID-19 pandemic led to introduction of sector-wide recommendation by regulators to suspend dividend payouts in view of prevailing large uncertainty. Using a panel data approach for two samples of listed and unlisted European banks, this paper provides evidence that, over a decade and a half preceding the pandemic, bank dividend payouts were adjusted in line with the three motivations found in the literature. The results are robust to selection of alternative variables representing these motivations. Banks are however found not to discount expectations about future economic conditions or their own profitability when making payouts. Simulations shown in the paper suggest that, in the absence of supervisory recommendations, banks would likely have reduced the payouts only slightly in the first year of the pandemic.

经济文献表明，银行改变股息支付的三个主要原因。他们可能愿意向股东发出良好的未来盈利能力的信号，以解决信息不对称问题，或者利用股息来降低代理成本，或者可能面临审慎监管机构要求保留收益的压力。鉴于普遍存在的巨大不确定性，COVID-19 大流行导致监管机构在全行业范围内提出暂停派息的建议。本文对欧洲上市银行和非上市银行的两个样本采用面板数据方法，提供的证据表明，在大流行之前的十五年里，银行股息支付是根据文献中发现的三个动机进行调整的。结果对于代表这些动机的替代变量的选择是稳健的。然而，银行在支付款项时并未低估对未来经济状况或自身盈利能力的预期。论文中显示的模拟表明，如果没有监管建议，银行在大流行的第一年可能只会略微减少支出。