The Effect of Dividend Smoothing on the Purchase Price Allocation to Goodwill

Abstract

It has been well known that acquiring firms engage in an opportunistic manipulation of post-acquisition earnings by overstating the value of goodwill with the introduction of IFRS. This paper investigates whether a dividend policy mitigates this earnings management problem. Using hand-collected data of Korean firms, we find a negative association between the degree of dividend smoothing and the evaluation of goodwill. The empirical evidence shows that dividend smoothing is an effective policy to mitigate the problem of the overstated value of goodwill. One limitation of the study is that the number of firms is too small to possibly generalize beyond the context of this study. Still, the small population did not negate recognition of the importance of dividend policy on the purchase price allocation to goodwill.