The impact of dividend announcements on share price and trading volume: empirical evidence from the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the stock market response to dividend announcements in high growth emerging markets of Gulf countries. Design/methodology/approach: The sample includes 1,092 dividend announcements from 299 listed firms over the period 2010-2015. Findings: In the environment where there is an absence of capital gain and income tax, the authors find some evidence for the stock price reaction that partly supports the signaling hypothesis. The findings show that the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) market is inefficient because of the leakage information before the announcement in bad news, and the delay of share price adjustment in good news. In addition, the authors report significant trading volume (TV) reaction in all the three announcements clusters, where dividends increase, decrease, and are constant, lending support to the hypothesis that the dividend change announcements have an impact on the TV response due to different investors’ preferences. Originality/value: This is the first empirical paper on market reaction in share price and TV around dividend announcement using data for the majority of GCC countries.