This study shows that growth opportunities, company risk, leverage, insider stockholding, stock market conditions (bull or bear), optimistic expectation, profitability, tax consideration, firm size, historic dividends, stock price, and industry characteristics have significant power in explaining relative payout ratios of stock dividends versus cash dividends. In addition, the evidence indicates that the substitution effect is driven by the first five of these variables. On the other hand, the findings show that stock-dividend distribution does increase shareholders' wealth in the short run, but probably only for those firms paying high stock dividends. Then stock performance reverts as expected, but surprisingly the long-term CAR turns negative soon and the downward trend continues over the subsequent time period. In addition, paying extremely high stock dividends would further worsen the long-term stock performance.