Valuations for some dividend-paying stocks might be a bit overextended, but they’re not overpriced, according to a panel of experts.

In fact, these can be considered boom times for dividend investing. says a veteran portfolio manager.

“We’re in the golden age of dividend investing,” says Hersh Cohen, managing director, senior portfolio manager and co-chief investment officer for ClearBridge Investments. “We’re seeing a staggering increase in dividends.”

Several companies have sharply increased their dividends, including Target, Wal-Mart and Caterpillar.

Technology companies such as Texas Instruments, Qualcomm and Cisco pay dividends, which would have been unheard of a few years ago because it would have jeopardized their standing as “growth” companies, Cohen says.

Cohen spoke on a panel yesterday at the Morningstar Investment Conference in Chicago that focused on whether a dividend bubble has burst.

Cohen and his copanelists, Jesper Madsen, portfolio manager for Matthews International Capital Management LLC’s Asia Dividend and China Dividend strategies, and John Spears, vice president of Tweedy, Browne Fund, agreed that dividends were in no danger of collapsing.

Cohen says there’s a difference between stock values being overextended and being in a bubble.

“A bubble is when [prices go so high that] you never get your money back. That’s why I don’t think we’re in a dividend bubble,” he says, adding that dividend stocks are not at valuations similar to what technology companies were during the dot-com bubble in the late 1990s.

Madsen says some of the Asian staples stocks have run up a bit more than he’d like and he’s sought to tweak his fund to emphasize growth more than yield. “We’re not solely seeking yield… . We’ve been trading down on yield to get more growth,” he says.

Investors have piled into dividend stocks, but Spears says despite the renewed interest, there’s been little change in how Tweedy Browne looks at companies to buy. “We like to look at businesses as if we owned the whole company,” he says, adding, “That’s nothing abnormal from what we’ve done for the past 30 years. We sell when the yield goes down and the price goes up.”

Dividend stocks were beat up a bit recently over worries about whether the Federal Reserve would taper its $85 billion bond-buying program, known as quantitative easing. Cohen says he’s not too concerned.

“I like to listen to [Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke]. He tells you what to expect,” Cohen says.

Cohen and Spears spoke glowingly of the Fed and other central banks. Commenting on Fed actions after the 2008 credit crisis, Cohen says, “Bernanke saved the world.” Spears also piped in: “God bless the central banks and deposit insurance.”

Central bank actions have had a slightly different impact on Asian equities, Madsen says. His Asia-focused funds would likely pay a little more attention to Fed actions because of the effect on currency markets. One side effect the rising U.S. dollar has had on that area of focus is that “no one is talking currency wars anymore,” he says.

Madsen says he watches the actions of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who is determined to pull Japan out of its 30-year recession. In addition to monetary and fiscal policy, structural change is needed in Japan, Madsen says, which is much more difficult. Yet he says it’s not inconceivable.

“In Japan’s history, twice in the past 150 years they’ve accepted severe upheaval in their society. Let’s see if it happens again,” Madsen says.

Cohen says while dividend stocks might have been knocked around a bit, people need to keep perspective and think long term. “When people focus on price [and it falls], they lose sight that their income can double in less than nine years. No one gets raises like that,” he says.

There’s a chance, he says, that dividends could continue to grow to a point similar to the late 1960s: “If you worry about stocks being extended, you may never get to see the most beautiful thing to behold—when the dividend is more than the price of the stock.”