Bu çalışmada firmaların kâr payı politikalarını etkileyen etmenlerin ortaya koyulması amaçlanmıştır. Bu bağlamda Borsa İstanbul’da işlem gören 168 firmanın 2005 ve 2017 yılları arasındaki verilerinden faydalanılmıştır. Bağımlı değişkenin karakteristiğine uygun olarak araştırmada rassal etki tobit modelinden faydalanılmıştır. Bağımlı değişken olarak firmaların kâr payı ödeme oranları kullanılırken bağımsız değişken olarak kaldıraç oranı, firma büyüklüğü, yaş, yatırım oranı, nakit akışı oranı ve satışlardaki artış oranları kullanılmıştır. Bunun yanında hem kurulan ilk modelin sağlamlığını test etmek hem de makroekonomik değişkenlerin kâr payı ödeme oranına etkisini ortaya koyabilmek için, ekonomik büyüme ve enflasyon oranının da yer aldığı ikinci bir model kurulmuştur. Analiz sonuçlarına göre kaldıraç ve yatırım oranındaki artışlar firmaların kâr payı ödeme oranlarını azaltırken, firma büyüklüğü yaş, nakit akış oranı yüksek firmaların daha fazla kâr payı dağıttıkları gözlenmiştir. Buna ek olarak satışlardaki artış oranı ile ifade edilen gelecek büyüme fırsatlarının kâr payı ödeme oranını pozitif ancak istatistiksel olarak anlamsız şekilde etkilediği tespit edilmiştir. Son olarak ekonomik büyümenin bağımlı değişkene etkisinin pozitif, enflasyonun ise negatif ancak istatistiksel olarak anlamsız etkileri gözlenmiştir.

1. LITERATURE 1.1. RESEARCH SUBJECT A dividend is the allocated amount of the company’s earnings to the stockholders. On the one hand, it is expected to be strictly related to the financial resource management and performance of maximizing shareholder wealth by deciding to pay, not to pay, to pay different from the previous years. On the other hand, the dividend irrelevance theory of Miller and Modigliani (1961) suggests that the value of the firm is irrelevant to the payout ratio, but it is related to the earning power and risk of its assets. In a perfect world, the value of the firm is not affected by the dividend distribution decisions (Gitman and Zutter, 2011). In the real world, due to the differences in taxation, information asymmetry, agency problems, transaction costs, this irrelevance argument is challenged. So, the researchers have developed dividend theories to explain why and when firms distribute or do not distribute dividends (Baker, 2009; Baker, Kılınçarslan and Arsal, 2018). After the seminal paper of Lintner (1956) lots of models have been developed to describe why firms should pay dividends, why they should not, the irrelevance of distributing or not distributing, when should they distribute it, which signals can be sent to the current and potential shareholders. The payout policy decision is also called the payout puzzle, due to these theories which sometimes contradict or support each other. Baker, et. al. (2018) list the dividend theories which may be important in explaining dividend decisions in the Turkish market. These theories are bird-in-the-hand theory, signaling theory, agency cost theory, taxpreference theory, tax clientele effect, catering theory, residual dividend theory, maturity (firm life cycle) theory, substitute model of dividends. In addition to these theories, there is a huge literature that tries to determine the factors that affect payout policy. The studies in this literature generally use firm-level and sometimes macro-level independent variables to identify the payout policy of the firms (see. Amidu and Abor, 2006; Al-Malkawi, 2007; Ahmed and Javid, 2008; Afza and Mirza, 2010; Gupta and Banga, 2010; Singhania and Gupta, 2012; Patra, Poshakwale and Ow-Yong, 2012; KaźmierskaJóźwiak, 2015; Jabbouri, 2016; Chang, Chang and Dutta, 2020; Yıldız, Gökbulut and Korkmaz, 2014; Kuzucu, 2015; Ersoy and Çetenak, 2015; Al-Najjar and Kılınçarslan, 2016; Abdioğlu, 2016; Erdaş, 2017; Özvar and Ersoy, 2017; Karaçayır and Sağlam, 2017; Kılınçarslan, 2018; Al-Najjar and Kılınçarslan, 2018). 1.2. RESEARCH PURPOSE AND IMPORTANCE The dividend payout policy is one of the most important decisions that financial managers have to make. This study aims to reveal the factors affecting the dividend policy of the Turkish listed firms that operate in the manufacturing industry. 1.3. CONTRIBUTION of the ARTICLE to the LITERATURE Exploring the determinants of the payout policy of the firms listed on BIST with recent data and trying to depict the effect of some chosen macro-level variables are the main contribution of the study to the literature. 2. DESIGN AND METHOD 2.1. DATA COLLECTION METHOD The data of 168 firms listed on Borsa Istanbul between 2005 and 2017 is used. The Finnet Database and Word Bank Database are used to obtain the firm-level and macro-level variables, respectively. The firm-level variables are deflated by utilizing 2005 producer price index. And, minimum-maximum (out of firm age and macro-level variables) 1% values are clipped to avoid the effects of extreme values. 2.2. QUANTITATIVE / QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS Random effect Tobit model is employed to determine the factors affecting the payout policy of the Turkish listed firms in the manufacturing industry, in accordance with the features of the dependent variable. 2.3. RESEARCH MODEL The dependent variable of the research is the payout ratio. And, two models have been established. The first one only contains the firm-level independent variables. These are leverage, firm size, firm age, investment rate, cash flow rate, and growth of the sales. Additionally, the second model contains the growth of gross domestic product (GDP) and inflation rate. 3. FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION The results show that an increase in leverage and investment rate reduces the dividend payout ratio, while an increase in size, age, and cash-flo