Contrarian Investor: The impact of our dividend fetish

'Obsession with dividends benefits the wealthy'

It has been a bumper few weeks for world class research reports and white papers trying to explain the strange, populist times we are living in.

The stand-out paper is from a US research outfit called the Brookings Institution called Mortality and Morbidity in the 21st Century. It is co-authored by the husband and wife team of Anne Case and Nobel Prize winner Angus Deaton, from Princeton University, and is a forensic analysis of what is going wrong within white working class America - and why it will be so difficult to fix.  The latest white paper from asset management firm GMO by contrast is not quite as forensic in its evidence gathering, but it is nevertheless an equally damning analysis, with a range of investment implicat...