Theoretical motives of corporate cash holdings and political connections: firms level evidence from a developing economy

In this paper, we revisit the theoretical motives of corporate cash holdings while concentrating on the effect of political connections. In particular, we postulate two competing hypotheses for the effects that political connections can have on cash holdings: ‘substitution effect hypothesis’ and ‘complementary effect hypothesis’. Using the data on Pakistani firms over the period 2002–2010, we find that connected firms hold significantly larger cash reserves than their non-connected counterparts, thus confirming the ‘complementary hypothesis’, which suggests that agency problems lead connected firms to accumulate large amount of cash. Further, this effect is found to be more pronounced in dictatorial as opposed to democratic regimes indicating the presence of higher degrees of political patronage in that period. Finally, we also find differences in the complementary effect based on firm characteristics. Our results suggest that the firm size and leverage have increasing effects on the cash holdings of connected firms, contrary to the mainstream literature standpoint.     

R&D investment,cash holdings and the financial crisis: evidence from Korean corporate data

This article examines the real effects of the financial crisis in 2008 on corporate R&D investment by analyzing firm-level panel data from 2005 to 2011 obtained from KIS-VALUE, a Korean corporate finance database. I estimate a dynamic panel model of R&D investment that includes an after-crisis dummy to reflect the effects of the external finance supply shock after the financial crisis, an interaction term of the dummy and cash holdings to measure the marginal effect of cash holdings after the crisis, investment opportunities (sales and the q ratio) and financial positions as the debt-equity ratio. The estimation implies a negative yet relatively small impact of the credit supply shock from the financial crisis on R&D investment and the mitigation of the negative impacts by cash holdings after the onset of the financial crisis, whereas the data show decreasing R&D investment and sales for the whole period. Based on the data and the estimation, I find that firms were able to lessen the pressure from diminishing market demand before the crisis using external finance, but they had to use internal financial sources after the crisis smooth R&D investment.     

Investment opportunities and cash holdings of firms: an empirical study on Korean firms

We find that the cash flow sensitivity of cash holdings of firms whose investment opportunities are lower is significantly higher by examining a panel data of 898 Korean firms for 1999–2014. The cash flow sensitivity of investment is also found to be lower in case of low investment opportunity. Both findings suggest that firms decide to hold cash in response to an increase in cash flow when they do not have a good investment opportunity. Precautionary motive because of financial constraints and uncertainty, and agency problems, however, are not associated with the cash flow sensitivity of cash holdings. These findings imply that it is necessary to develop new investment opportunities to encourage firms to spend more cash in Korea.     

Determinants of corporate cash holdings: evidence from the emerging market of Turkey

This study analyses the factors that might explain the level of corporate cash holdings in a broad sample of Turkish-listed nonfinancial firms over the period 1997 to 2011. The empirical results reveal that, on average, Turkish firms hold 9.1% of their total assets as cash and cash equivalents. There is a steadily increasing trend in cash holding across the years. Both the system GMM and the difference GMM regression results are consistent; almost exactly the same variables are significant and going in the same direction. The findings indicate that the previous year’s cash holding is positive and significant determinant at the current year’s cash level, suggesting that these firms have a targeted cash level. Furthermore, the results reveal that cash flow and growth opportunities have positive and significant impact on the cash level. However, the amount of capital expenditures, liquid assets used as cash substitute, the degree of tangibility of assets, financial debt ratio and leverage have negative and significant impact on the cash level. Most of these explanatory variables were in line with our theoretical background and with previous studies as well.     

Gender diversity and firm performance: evidence from India and Singapore

ABSTRACT

This study investigates if gender diversity on boards is an effective driver of financial performance. For this purpose, this study choses two countries, one of which has the soft law approach (Singapore) while the other has mandatory requirements (India) on corporate boards gender diversity. By doing so, it examines if there is a comparability between the listed firms of the two countries. Our results suggest that the gender diversity has a positive and significant effect on the financial performance of the firms of both the countries. Although, the gender diversity of the two countries does not seem to affect the growth opportunities of both the countries. Further, our results indicate that the board characteristics affect the performance positively and significantly when the sample is divided into five quantiles for the firms in these two countries. These findings have implications to the managerial decision making and relevance to stewardship theory and resource dependency theory.     

Gender differences in financial performance: new empirical evidence

This article provides new empirical evidence on gender differences in self-reported and observed financial performance. Using a quasi-experimental framework, comparing people who live in a matrilineal and a patrilineal environment in India, the results show that no significant gender differences in observed and self-reported performance exist among respondents who belong to the matrilineal culture. In contrast, women who live in a patrilineal environment self-report more often than men that they are not dealing well with economic and financial problems. However, no significant gender differences in observed financial performance are found.     

人力资本及其结构视角下企业现金股利分配研究

人力资本作为企业获得竞争优势的重要因素之一,对企业的行为会产生显著影响。本文以2009-2020年中国A股上市企业为样本,探讨人力资本及高级人力资本结构对企业现金股利分配的影响。研究发现,人力资本投入及高级人力资本结构会显著减少企业现金股利分配。在经过一系列稳健性检验后,结论依然成立。进一步分析中发现,在人力资本较为密集的企业中,现金股利分配更少或企业更不倾向于分配现金股利;融资约束和《会计准则第9号—职工薪酬》的修订皆强化了人力资本及高级人力资本结构与现金股利分配间的负向关系。本文将劳动经济学理论同公司金融相结合,从人力资本的“正面”视角发现了中国企业“低股利”现象之谜。     

Employee treatment and the choice of liquidity: lines of credit versus cash holdings

By examining the relation between the employee welfare index and the choice between lines of credit (LC) and cash holdings, we provide empirical findings consistent with monitored liquidity insurance, agency, and tax theories. There is a negative relation between the LC-to-cash ratio and the employee treatment index, which is more pronounced for firms with large intangible assets. Additionally, this negative relation is observed only in low agency firms, which is consistent with the prediction of agency theory of cash holdings. Firms increase LC to meet future investment opportunities rather than increasing cash holdings when their marginal tax rates are high.     

Financialization,Shareholder Orientation and the Cash Holdings of US Corporations

Growth in the cash holdings of US nonfinancial corporations (NFCs) has received considerable attention in recent years. These cash holdings constitute a primary component of the growth in firm-level financial asset holdings often highlighted in analyses of the ‘financialization’ of NFCs. In this article, I use a panel of US corporations to empirically analyze two links between corporate cash holdings and the literature on financialization. First, I find a small but positive relationship between cash holdings and shareholder value ideology among large corporations. I capture the growing entrenchment of shareholder ideology using average industry-level stock repurchases, to proxy for industry-level norms encouraging managers to target stock price-based indicators of firm performance. Second, I find a positive relationship between a firm's cash holdings and a measure of the differential it earns between interest income and expense. Given that cash is classified with short-term marketable (and, therefore, interest-bearing) securities on firm balance sheets, this result lends empirical support to the hypothesis that traditionally nonfinancial firms are increasingly engaged in borrowing and lending for profit.     

Gender, piece rates and wages: evidence from matched employer-employee data

Why are women disproportionately on piece rates? We investigatethree possible explanations: (1) Women are more likely to beon piece rates, because they have a shorter expected tenurethan men. (2) A greater demand for flexibility between workand home attracts women to work place technologies suitablefor variable pay based on individual performance. (3) Womenprefer piece rates, because they are subject to less wage discriminationwhen objective performance measures are available. The weightof our empirical evidence supports the third hypothesis. Theunexplained gender wage gap is substantially smaller in thepiece-rate regime than in the time-wage regime.     

Explaining informal payments for health services in Central and Eastern Europe: an institutional asymmetry perspective

The aim of this paper is to propose and evaluate a new institutional theory explanation for patients making informal payments for health services in Central and Eastern Europe. This views informal payments by patients to healthcare professionals as arising when formal institutional failures lead to an asymmetry between the laws and regulations of formal institutions and the unwritten rules of informal institutions. Reporting a 2013 Eurobarometer survey of the prevalence of informal payments by patients in Central and Eastern European countries, a strong association is revealed between the level of asymmetry between the formal and informal institutions, and the propensity to make informal payments. The association between informal payments and various formal institutional imperfections is then explored to evaluate which structural conditions might reduce this institutional asymmetry, and thus the propensity to make informal payments. The paper concludes by exploring the implications for tackling such informal practices.     

Board diversity and firm performance: evidence from the U.K. SMEs

This study examines the relationship between board diversity and firm performance in small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the U.K. In particular, we investigate the role of gender and age as two dimensions of diversity. Using a large sample of SMEs (34,798 firms) located in the U.K. and focusing on the period from 2005 to 2013, our results show a significant negative association between each of gender diversity and age diversity, and firm performance. Our evidence yields important insights on the association between board diversity and firm performance, and calls suggestions for increased board diversity into question. A possible explanation for our findings could be due to the fact that our sampled firms are SMEs, whereas those in previous studies have been large enterprises. This research provides insights to entrepreneurs on how to enhance their performance, and to governments and policymakers on the development of rules that would achieve better performance in the SME sector.     

Alternative transactions variables and the empirical evidence of economies of scale in money holdings

Empirical results often seem to contradict the prediction of economies of scale in money holdings of the Baumol-Tobin model. The difference between theory and results might, however, be caused by an under-estimation of transactions by the usual proxy GNP. An illustration is given by estimates of Swedish demand for money equations involving an alternative proxy.     

Cultural globalisation, institutional diversity and the unequal accumulation of intellectual capital

National economies used to be characterised by cultural standardisationand social protection. Globalisation pushes cultural standardisationbeyond the boundaries of national states and induces a globaldilution of the standards of social protection. At the sametime, if national economies specialise according to their comparativeinstitutional advantage, global economic integration may helppromote institutional diversity and variety in welfare policies.However, the institution of a global system of intellectualproperty rights may seriously limit the ‘biodiversity’of capitalism and imply a global revenge of a new internationalform of Taylorism. The overall result may be a very unequalaccumulation of intellectual capital. Paradoxically, the modernglobal economy may end up sharing some aspects of the agrariansocieties that have been displaced by modern nation states.     

The impact of formal financial inclusion on informal financial intermediation and cash preference: evidence from Africa

This paper examines the effect of formal financial intermediation (inclusion) on informal financial intermediation and the use of cash for economic activities. Using data from the Global Findex 2014, we examine whether the use of formal financial intermediaries reduces cash preference and the use of informal financial intermediaries. Our empirical results show that informal financial intermediation is positively associated with formal financial inclusion. This indicates that the relationship between informal and formal financial intermediation is complementary rather than a trade-off, which demonstrates the importance of informal finance plays in the financial system of Africa. Moreover, the use of formal financial intermediaries significantly reduces the preference for holding cash, implying that a robust financial system infrastructure has the potential of mobilizing excess liquidity in the informal economy of Africa for growth and development.     

Gender difference in promotions: new evidence from the internal labor market in China

Gender differences in the labor market have attracted significant attention from economists, who focus on gender differences not only in wages but also in promotions. However, the research on gender differences in promotions within the internal labor market is scant, especially in China. By taking advantage of rare personnel administration data from a large firm in China, this paper explores different aspects of the gender promotion gap, and then further discusses the contribution of several individual and organizational variables in accounting for gender differences in each aspect of promotions.     

Growth effects of FDI in 80 developing economies: the role of policy reforms and institutional constraints

Theoretical and empirical literatures have identified several channels through which foreign direct investment (FDI) influences economic growth. This paper examines the impact of FDI on economic output growth per worker using aggregate production function augmented with FDI inflows, economic policy reforms and institutional constraints. The paper covers 80 developing countries over the period 1980–2006. We use panel data and employ fixed, random effects and GMM methods for estimation. Our results highlight the importance of FDI, policy reforms and institutional development for growth in developing economies. Finally, we demonstrate that irrespective of reforms and institutions, an increase in FDI affects output growth positively.     

Investigating the determinants of domestic bonds: the role of socio-economic and institutional factors

This article investigates the determinants of the size of domestic bond market using economic, social and institutional factors. We expand the body of existing literature by suggesting that economic and social environment as well as institutional settings vary between developed and emerging economies. The article uses recent data from a wide range of countries, incorporates a variety of macroeconomic variables, social indicators and institutional factors to reassess the determinant of domestic bond markets. Robustness of the empirical analysis is established through both two-stage least squares and generalized method of movements techniques. The results of this article show that the size of the economy, breadth and depth of the banking system, the monetary policy stance, the degree of openness, the level of corruption, the degree of civil liberty and status of market access to investors, all play a crucial role in the determination of the size of the domestic bond market. We also find differences across developed and emerging market samples. The results are robust to different specifications and the corresponding estimation techniques.     

Exploring the relationship between CSR performance and financial constraints: empirical evidence from European firms

This paper investigates the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities and financial constraints. Our panel dataset consists of 397 European companies listed in the STOXX Europe 600 during 2009–2014. The findings reveal that firms with higher CSR performance exhibit lower degree of financial constraints. In addition, the link between CSR performance and financial constraints is a fully mediated relationship. The negative effect of CSR performance on financial constraints follows the path through mitigating agency conflicts of free cash flow and information asymmetry. The findings suggest that one mechanism linking CSR performance and financial constraints is a reduction of capital-market imperfections.     

Institutional arrangements and price rebalancing: empirical evidence from the United States and Europe

This paper explores the rebalancing of prices for voice service in the United States (US) and the European Union (EU) from conceptual and empirical perspectives. We determine the overall cost and structure of a standardized basket of residential and business services. Our data indicate that during the 1994–2000 period the degree of rate rebalancing was significantly higher in the EU than in the US. While the developments at the level of EU Member States are more heterogeneous and the process of rate rebalancing is not completed, these findings correspond to the predictions derived from our comparative institutional analysis.