It is not a flat world after all: Tax repatriation costs and cash value

US corporations have accumulated record‐high amounts of cash, and most of it is trapped in foreign accounts. This study tests the hypothesis that the marginal value of cash decreases in the presence of tax repatriation costs, as these costs are a strong indication that part of the cash is trapped abroad. Cash abroad is not readily available to the company because it is subject to an additional layer of tax before it can be used or distributed. Moreover, uncertainty surrounds the potential use of foreign cash, and research documents that firms holding high amounts of cash abroad are likely to invest in negative net present value activities. Finally, possible changes in tax regulation are an additional source of uncertainty. Consequently, foreign cash should be worth less than domestic cash. Using a large sample of US firms drawn from COMPUSTAT during the 1991–2012 period, the analysis suggests that shareholders value an extra dollar of cash at $1.086. However, this result changes dramatically when the change in cash is interacted with the tax cost of repatriating the earnings. That is, the marginal value of cash decreases significantly in the presence of tax repatriation costs, and shareholders discount cash when it is likely to be held abroad. This study contributes to the literature on cash holding by investigating whether tax repatriation costs affect the value of corporate cash. Moreover, the findings show that there are important economic consequences linked to the phenomenon of cash accumulation in foreign countries and therefore provide regulators with a sound foundation on which to take additional actions to require more disclosure of and transparency in the actual location of firms’ cash holdings.     

城市轨道交通项目融资的偿债能力分析

城市轨道交通项目融资的贷款人并不是项目所有者,不可能从项目的投资中获得股本收益。因此,当贷款人在考察是否为采用项目融资方式建设的城市轨道交通项目提供融资时,所关心的重点是项目未来的偿债能力。本文在分析偿债资金来源的基础上,构造城市轨道交通项目的现金流模型,并从贷款偿还期、债务覆盖率、利息覆盖率、债务承受比率等方面,对城市轨道交通项目融资的偿债能力进行分析。     

Free cash flow, debt-monitoring and managers' LIFO/FIFO policy choice

This paper explores the explanatory power of Jensen's free cash flow hypothesis in managers' choice of LIFO versus FIFO. The association between FCF, and choice of inventory methods is based on the assumption that there is a potential conflict of interest between managers and shareholders when LIFO is the tax minimization method and that non-value-maximizing managers of firms with the FCF problem have incentives to choose FIFO, an income increasing method, in order to increase their compensation. However, since debt can act as a monitoring device and mitigate the agency problems of FCF, managers of firms with high FCF and high debt are less likely to choose FIFO than managers of firms with high FCF and low debt. The evidence is consistent with this expectation.     

The Wealth Effect of Domestic Joint Ventures: Evidence from Taiwan

This study presents important international evidence by examining the wealth effect of domestic joint ventures by Taiwanese firms. In opposite to United States evidence, we find that announcements of domestic joint ventures by Taiwanese firms are, on average, associated with significantly negative abnormal stock returns. We also find that the stock market response to announced domestic joint ventures is significantly positively related to the announcing firms' investment opportunities, size of investment and debt ratio, and is significantly negatively related to the business relatedness variable. In contrast, free cash flow, firm size, relative firm size and managerial ownership are found to have no significant power in explaining the market response. Our results support the investment opportunities, synergy and complementarity hypotheses as well as a broad interpretation of the free cash flow hypothesis, but reject the absolute size, relative size and alignment-of-interests hypotheses. This study makes valuable contributions to the literature by providing the first direct evidence on the role of investment opportunities, synergy and alignment-of-interests in explaining the wealth effect of domestic joint ventures     

Value of Multinationality: Internalization, Managerial Self-interest, and Managerial Compensation

In this paper, we examine the impact of managerial self-interest on the value of multinationality. Since agency theory also suggests that a divergence between the interests of managers and shareholders can be aligned by effective managerial incentive, we also examine the effect of managerial compensation on the value of multinationality. Our results show that for high- Q (Tobin's Q > 1 ) firms, investors do not associate the spending of free cash flow on multinationality with the problem of overinvestments. For high- Q firms, it is also found that the value of multinationality can be enhanced by effective managerial incentives. For low- Q firms (Tobin's Q < 1 ), it is found that the concern of managerial self-interest overwhelms the benefits of internalization, making multinationality a value-decreasing event. For low- Q firms, managerial compensation is also ineffective in promoting value-enhancing foreign direct investments.     

资金合理流动:理财目标的现实考察

本文通过对企业目标的考察,认为以企业的社会使命为企业的目标才能使企业有所发展,而要做到这一点,必须以资金合理流动作为企业财务目标,才能使企业的长久目标有可能实现。资金合理流动作为理想企业目标与现实存在的结合就成为了必然。     

Optimal investment with fixed financing costs

Models with a premium on external finance produce counterfactual predictions about liquidity management. We address this shortcoming by introducing a fixed cost of increasing external finance into an otherwise standard investment/financing problem. This additional financial friction is well-motivated by case studies and our analysis shows that it generates more realistic predictions about liquidity management: firms hold external finance and idle cash simultaneously, and may invest an additional dollar of cash flow in liquidity rather than repaying external funds or investing in productive capital. In addition to better fitting the stylized facts about the time-series and cross-sectional pattern of liquidity holding, these results may help shed light on the fragility of estimates of investment–cash flow sensitivities.     

Dividend Changes and Future Earnings Performance： Evidence from UK Market

This paper investigates the dividend signaling hypothesis, described here as the relationship between dividend changes and future earnings performance. We find that managers pursue different patterns in UK from that in US when making dividend policy. A positive and significant association between dividend changes and the growth of future earnings is observed in the immediately following year after dividend announced There isn＇t significant link in the longer future. These phenomena are caused by managers＇ near-eyesight in UK market. In addition, an interesting finding is that dividend decreases have larger negative influence on earnings growth than positive impact on earnings prospects of dividend increases. This is consistent with the infrequent occurrence of dividend reduction.     

现金制与应计制财务报表有用性的问卷调查分析

中国的《企业会计准则——现金流量表》要求所有企业从1998年开始编制现金流量表，它克服了传统财务报表所体现的、与应计制会计确认和计量程序相关联的局限性。但是现金流量表、资产负债表和利润表的决策有用性是否存在差异，还缺乏经验证据。本文设计调查问卷，要求财务报表使用者在21种决策背景下封三大报表的有用性追行评级。结果表明，现金流量表在许多决策背景下可以与利润表和资产负债表相媲美，而在以下决策背景下，现金流量表的评级大大高于其他两张报表：评价流动性，评价短期偿债能力，评价支付股利的能力，评价净利润的质量，突出净利润与现金余额之间的差异，预测财务危机，以及预测未来现金流量的金额与时间。