A new study reveals that controlling shareholders use dividends to mitigate conflicts with other shareholders, which may increase the access to new equity and reduce the cost of capital. The study is explained in an article, which is forthcoming in the Review of Finance, by Janis Berzins, Øyvind Bøhren, and Bogdan Stacescu of the BI Norwegian Business School. The authors analyzed 10,000 private Norwegian firms.