Mapping Trend in Corporate Dividend Policy: Review and Bibliometric Analysis

Figuring out the dividend payout ratio is one of the most difficult tasks for financial managers. In addition to serving the company's best interests, it should safeguard the interests of shareholders. Concepts of relevance and irrelevance exist in relation to dividend policies. Dividends are thus still an open matter as of this writing. Research is being conducted on this subject, but no one has a perfect answer for why dividends are important, why corporations pay dividends, or how to solve the dividend puzzle. This study is an attempt to synthesize academic literatures on corporate dividend policy and includes citation, co-citation and co-occurrence analysis, bibliographic coupling, etc. Data were extracted from scopus database for the period of 2000–2021 and analyzed using Vosviewer software. The study starts with an initial search of 780 papers and after applying proper filtering criteria it reduced to 211 papers. Finding of the study shows constant rise in the quantity of papers between 2000 and 2021. The United States ranks first because it has made the most contributions to this field (17 papers), and coupling analysis yields five clusters in this field.