【正文】 s or pay dividends on an irregular basis. Instead, we investigate the views of a subset of Nasdaq firms, namely, those that consistently pay cash dividends. The fact that most Nasdaq firms do not pay dividends is not surprising given their characteristics. As Damodaran (1999) notes, a firm’ s dividend policy tends to follow the firm’ s life cycle. During the introduction and rapid expansion stages, firms typically pay no or very low dividends. Such firms characterize a large portion of firms trading on Nasdaq. Our study differs from previous research on dividend policy in several ways. First, unlike prior fieldwork and surveys that focus only on NYSElisted firms from a few industries, we study managers from dividendpaying Nasdaq firms from numerous industries. Michel (1979) and Baker(1988) present evidence that dividend policies vary across industries. Our rationale for examining Nasdaq firms rests on the belief that the views of Nasdaq managers may differ from those of NYSElisted firms because of different firm characteristics such as Second, we investigate several areas not examined in previous surveys such as views about historical patterns of dividends, dividend life cycle, and residual dividend policy. Finally, unlike most research that focuses on a single explanation of why panies pay dividends, we examine multiple explanations. By taking this approach, we can assess the relative importance of different reasons for paying dividends based on the level of agreement or disagreement with various statements involving each explanation. The finance literature contains four standard explanations for paying dividends—signaling,taxpreference, agency costs, and birdinthehand. The signaling, or asymmetric information,models for paying dividends, developed by Bhattacharya (1979), John and Williams (1985), and Miller and Rock (1985), suggest that managers as insiders choose dividend payment levels and dividend increases to signal private information to investors. Managers have an incentive to signal this private information to the investment public when they believe that the current market value of their firm’ s stock is below its intrinsic value. The increased dividend payment serves as a credible signal when other firms that do not have favorable inside information cannot mimic the dividend increase without unduly increasing the chance of later incurring a dividend cut. Strong support exists for the signaling explanation including research by Aharony and Swary (1980),Asquith and Mullins (1983), Kalay and Lowenstein (1986), Healey and Palepu (1988), and Nissim and Ziv (2020). A second explanation for paying dividends is taxpreference theory. Favorable tax treatment on capital gains (lower capital gains tax rate and deferral of capital gains tax) should cause investors to prefer nondividendpaying stocks. Tests of this taxpreference explanation for paying or not paying dividends take two forms. According to Brennan ’ s (1970) version of the capital asset pricing model, dividendpaying stocks must offer higher pretax returns than nondividendpaying stocks, all else equal. Brennan’ s empirical tests, however, are mixed. Also, Black and Scholes (1974) find no evidence of this tax effect, while Litzenberger and Ramaswamy (1979) and Kalay and Michaely (1993) find evidence that pretax returns are related to dividend yield. Other studies examine the exdividend date price drop. Favorable capital gains tax treatment could cause the price drop to be less than the dividend payment and cause investors to prefer nondividendpaying stocks. Empirical evidence on this matter is also inconclusive. For example, Elton and Gruber (1970) find an exdividend date price drop that is less than the dividend amount, but Michaely (1991) finds an exdividend date price drop equal to the dividend payment. Another explanation for why firms might pay dividends is based on agency relationships between various claimholders of the firm. Easterbrook (1984) argues that firms pay dividends to help reduce the agency costs associated with the separation of ownership and contr