Abstract: The value of financial flexibility is to create the means of coping with the external environment fluctuation and complexity and option of dealing with unpredictable events. However, our country lacks of normalized empirical research on how this factor plays an important role in enterprise financial decision-making. Taking annual financial data of listed companies from 2008 to 2014 in Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets as samples, based on the empirical measurement to the value of financial flexibility, the paper takes financial flexibility and cash dividend into the consistency framework, and investigates the impact of the value of financial flexibility on the cash dividend from different aspects. The results confirm that: the higher the listed company′s value of financial flexibility is, the lower the probability of cash dividend payment is, showing a negative correlation between value of financial flexibility and cash dividend payment level; in enterprises having high value of financial flexibility, their cash dividend levels are low, whether they are state-controlled enterprises or enterprises with larger proportion of tradable shares and managers ′shareholding. This study deepens the understanding of financial flexibility theory, and it also has reference value to financial practice.

Key words: the value of financial flexibility, cash dividend, listed companies