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Does Corporate Cash Holding Level Explain Mutual Fund Flow? Global Evidence
Abstract
This study investigates the influence of corporate cash holdings on the flow of open-end equity mutual funds. Building on the economic mechanisms that drive investors’ decisions when they construct their portfolio, the study analyses a comprehensive global dataset that includes 13,674 firms and 58,406 funds from 23 countries for the period from 2008 to 2017. Multiple regression models (pooled and fixed effect) are implemented to explore this relationship. The results show that there is a negative relationship between mutual fund flow and corporate cash holdings which indicates the significant role corporate cash holding policies have on the mutual fund industry. This article contributes to the literature by adding a new factor that can explain mutual fund investors’ behaviour. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first study to examine the relationship between corporate cash holdings and mutual fund flow, and one of the few studies to examine the influence of corporate-level decisions on the mutual fund industry. The results could help fund managers to better forecast future fund flow by considering corporate-level policies, namely cash holdings.
Vietnam is an interesting case to study firm behavior because it is an example of a successful transitional economy. In the last few years, the government is building a supportive environment to promote business activities. Therefore, it is crucial to investigate whether corporate managers utilize dividend payout policy as a corporate financial management tool to address information asymmetries in such an environment. However, in the context of emerging markets, this topic is still under-explored even though firms in emerging markets are of lower disclosure quality. This paper investigates how corporate dividend decision is associated with liquidity, a measure of information asymmetries using a data sample of listed firms in Vietnam, an emerging market. Specifically, we utilize a dataset of firms listed on the Ho Chi Minh City stock exchange (HOSE) from 2007 to 2015. We find a negative relation between stock market liquidity and dividend payout in Vietnamese firms. The finding confirms that corporate managers in Vietnam tend to compensate for less liquidity with more dividend payout. The paper also suggests that dividends could be a substitute for stock liquidity.
This study contributes to a better understanding of the determinants of corporate cash holdings and their effects on firm value. First, the extensive theoretical basis of corporate cash policies is disentangled. I distinguish two categories of theories. The first category comprises theories that stem from capital structure research, namely, the trade-off theory and the pecking-order theory. The second category includes theories that focus on agency conflicts. Second, this review identifies the most common proxies used in empirical research, aggregates them into general categories of determinants, and compares their predicted influences, according to different theories. In sum, ten general determinants, including firm size, growth opportunities, leverage, liquidity substitutes and corporate governance, are found to influence corporate cash holdings. Third, this article reviews the empirical evidence regarding what determines the level and market value of cash holdings, compares these observed associations to the predicted theoretical associations, and identifies avenues for future research.
Research summary: Cash can create shareholder value when used for adaptation to unfolding contingencies, but can also reduce value when appropriated by other stakeholders. We synthesize arguments from the behavioral theory of the firm, economic perspectives like agency theory, and the value‐creation versus value‐appropriation literatures to argue that the implications of cash for firm performance are context‐specific. Cash is more beneficial for firms operating in highly competitive, research‐intensive, or growth‐focused industries that are typical of contexts requiring adaptation in the face of uncertainties. Conversely, cash is more detrimental to performance in firms that are poorly governed, diversified, or opaque, as are typical of contexts where stakeholder conflicts, information asymmetries, or power imbalances can encourage value appropriation by other stakeholders.
Managerial summary: Cash can create shareholder value when used for adaptation to unfolding contingencies, but can also reduce value when appropriated by other stakeholders. While cash‐rich firms have higher performance on average, with those in the 75th percentile having a market‐to‐book value 15 percent higher than those in the 25th percentile, we find that the performance benefits of cash depend on the context. Cash is more beneficial for firms operating in highly competitive, research‐intensive, or growth‐focused industries that are typical of contexts requiring adaptation in the face of uncertainties. Conversely, cash is more detrimental to performance in firms that are poorly governed, diversified, or opaque, as are typical of contexts where stakeholder conflicts, information asymmetries, or power imbalances can encourage value appropriation by other stakeholders . Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Agency problems are an important determinant of corporate cash holdings. For a sample of more than 11,000 firms from 45 countries, we find that corporations in countries where shareholders rights are not well protected hold up to twice as much cash as corporations in countries with good shareholder protection. In addition, when shareholder protection is poor, factors that generally drive the need for cash holdings, such as investment oppor- tunities and asymmetric information, actually become less important. These results are stronger after controlling for capital market development. Indeed, consistent with the im- portance of agency costs, we find that firms hold larger cash balances when access to funds is easier. Our evidence is consistent with the conjecture that investors in countries with poor shareholder protection cannot force managers to disgorge excessive cash balances.
This paper addresses the question of why firms pay dividends, the so-called "dividend puzzle", from the agency perspective. We outline two agency models of dividends. On what we call "the outcome" model, dividends are the result of effective pressure by minority shareholders to force corporate insiders to disgorge cash. Under this model, stronger minority shareholder rights should be associated with higher dividends. On what we call "the substitute" model, insiders choose to pay dividends to establish a reputation for decent treatment of minority shareholders so that firms can raise equity finance in the future.
This paper provides new evidence on how the cost of carry is linked to corporate cash policy in the presence of financial frictions. Using both time-series and firm-level data for US public and private manufacturing firms, we find a negative correlation between cash holdings and the cost of carry for financially unconstrained firms. We find no evidence of such a relation for financially constrained firms. Our results suggest that financial constraints play an important role in adjusting cash to changes in the cost of carry. We introduce a simple model in which firms differ in their cost function of external finance, where the constrained firms' highly curved cost function drives a steeper cash demand, leading to their lower cash sensitivity to the cost of carry.
Purpose
This study aims to examine the role of fund family size on the money flow of Saudi Arabian open-end equity mutual funds. The author also investigates whether the relationship between fund flow and past return varies based on the fund's family size.
Design/methodology/approach
The study analyses 256 equity funds that operated in Saudi Arabia from 2006 until 2017. Pooled and fixed-effect regression models are used to test the relationship between mutual fund flow and family size.
Findings
The results indicate that fund flow is higher for large size family funds. The results also show that the relationship between mutual fund flow and past performance is more pronounced for large size families, which supports the concept that investors pay extra attention to funds' return and size.
Research limitations/implications
The author provides evidence of the significant effect of family size of mutual funds on future money flow, which helps fund managers to understand investors' motivations for allocating their cash.
Originality/value
This paper contributes to the literature by examining the impact of family size level on the interaction between fund flow and past performance. This study is believed to be the first to investigate the family size factor in Saudi Arabia using a comprehensive data set.
This study investigates the effects of oil price uncertainty on corporate cash holdings using large international publicly listed firms from 89 countries for the period 1990–2017. Building on the precautionary motive of cash and the trade-off theory, we argue that the oil price uncertainty has a significant impact on corporate cash holdings and this impact is nonlinear. First, we find that oil price volatility is positively associated with corporate cash holdings. However, we then find evidence that shows that the association between oil volatility and cash holdings exhibits a U-shape. Finally, we present evidence that the positive relationship between oil price uncertainty and corporate cash holdings is more pronounced in firms operating in oil-exporting countries and in oil-exposed industries. Overall, our findings support our predictions and are robust to multiple robustness tests.
In this paper, we study the impact of sovereign CDS on equity mutual funds across 24 developed and emerging market countries. Our investigation builds on the premise that mutual funds flow and performance respond negatively to increased default risk as measured via sovereign CDS entities. As predicted by our theory, we find that i) sovereign CDS spreads are indeed associated with decreased mutual funds return performance and ii) sovereign CDS spreads covary negatively with subsequent fund flow. This is consistent with investors being sensitive to the pricing information conveyed by the sovereign CDS market. Finally, we find that the impact of sovereign CDS spreads on mutual funds’ performance and flow is more pronounced among emerging market countries. Overall, these findings imply that mutual funds players could make extensive use of the information arising from CDS trading activity. In explaining these results, we emphasize the important implications for investors in mutual funds’ assets portfolios and for country-specific equity funds.
We investigate what determines variation in the composition of the financial assets that constitute corporate cash reserves and how this variation relates to other key liquidity management practices. The degree to which a firm invests its cash reserves in less liquid, longer-maturity financial assets that earn a higher yield is explained by financial constraints, the ability to accurately forecast short-term liquidity needs, and the firm's likelihood of defaulting on its debt. During years when a firm's cash reserves are required to fund increases in investment or operating expenses the firm transfers funds from less liquid to more liquid financial assets. A firm's decisions relating to the composition of its cash reserves interacts with other key liquidity management practices, such as relying on credit lines for liquidity, extending trade credit or using it as a source of financing, and holding large amounts of inventories. Our findings provide insights on an important component of corporate liquidity management decisions.
We comprehensively study the impact of oil market volatility on mutual fund flow. In particular, using an extensive dataset on Saudi Arabia covering virtually all equity funds over 2006–2017, this paper provides the first analysis of the linkages between fund flow and oil market volatility. Our main findings show that investors shift substantially their asset allocation to the equity mutual fund sector in periods of high volatility. Our further evidence suggests that flow to high oil-exposed funds is more sensitive to oil volatility than low oil-exposed funds. This is consistent with investors valuing professional management highly during risky periods in a setting where alternatives to equity investment are limited. Our study provides new evidence for a fast-growing market and reveals important implications for the mutual fund market which helps investors, academics and regulators to better understand the behaviour of this market.
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.
The value of corporate cash holdings has increased significantly in recent decades. On average, 0.61 in the 1980s, 1.12 in the 2000s. This increase is predominantly driven by the investment opportunity set and cash-flow volatility, as well as secular trends in product market competition, credit market risk, and within-firm diversification. We document a secular decrease in the speed of adjustment (SOA) in cash holdings, particularly for financially constrained firms with cash deficits, suggesting that capital market frictions can account for the trend in the value of cash holdings.
This study examines the speed of adjustment of cash holdings and extends the recent work that highlights the importance of accounting for heterogeneity of the speed of adjustment of cash holdings. The results indicate that firms with cash deficits, rated firms and firms with financial surpluses have a slower speed of adjustment, while firms with excess cash, non-rated firms and firms that have financial deficit adjust towards the target faster. Overall, the results support the idea that firms have a target level of cash holdings, however, costs of adjustment as well as costs of non-adjustment affect the speed with which firms adjust towards the target.
We investigate the cyclicality of international fund flows employing correlation and regression analysis using monthly data for almost 70 countries between 1996 and 2013. International fund flows are cross-border investments by global funds. Our results suggest that contemporaneously international fund flows are counter-cyclical: fund flows are above trend when output is below trend. Bond flows are more counter-cyclical than equity flows. Furthermore, the counter-cyclical behavior of fund flows has become more pronounced after the global financial crisis. Fund flows into non-OECD countries are mainly driven by global factors while fund flows into OECD countries are more influenced by country-specific factors.
When assessing a fund manager’s skill, sophisticated investors will consider all factors (priced and unpriced) that explain cross-sectional variation in fund performance. We investigate which factors investors attend to by analyzing mutual fund flows as a function of recent returns decomposed into alpha and factor-related returns. Surprisingly, investors attend most to market risk (beta) when evaluating funds and treat returns attributable to size, value, momentum, and industry factors as alpha. Using proxies for investor sophistication (wealth, distribution channels, and periods of high investor sentiment), we find that more sophisticated investors use more sophisticated benchmarks when evaluating fund performance.
Received August 14, 2015; accepted May 3, 2016 by Editor Stefan Nagel.
Firms until recently were effectively constrained to hold liquid assets in non-interest-bearing accounts. As a result, the cost of capital of firms’ liquid-assets portfolios exceeded the return, especially when the risk-free interest rate was high. The spread between cost and return is the cost of carry. Changes in the cost of carry explain the dynamics of corporate “cash” holdings both in the United States and abroad, and the level of cost of carry explains the level of liquid-asset holdings across countries. We conclude that current US corporate cash holdings are not abnormal in a historical or international comparison.
Received February 17, 2015; accepted October 1, 2015 by Editor David Denis.
The average cash-to-assets ratio for U.S. industrial firms more than doubles from 1980 to 2006. A measure of the economic importance of this increase is that at the end of the sample period, the average firm can retire all debt obligations with its cash holdings. Cash ratios increase because firms' cash flows become riskier. In addition, firms change: They hold fewer inventories and receivables and are increasingly R&D intensive. While the precautionary motive for cash holdings plays an important role in explaining the increase in cash ratios, we find no consistent evidence that agency conflicts contribute to the increase.
We propose and test a methodological framework to examine the relation between mutual fund fees and return predictability. Gil-Bazo and Ruiz-Verdu (2009) drew attention to the puzzling fact that funds with worse before-fee performance charge higher fees. We make another contribution to the literature about the market for equity mutual funds: we find strong evidence of predictability for mutual fund fees. Funds with both positive and negative relations with fees show strong evidence of negative return predictability for their fees. Our findings are robust to alternative estimation methods and under the assumption of conditionally heteroskedastic stock returns. Our results also show that conditioning information (e.g. dividend yield, t-bill yield, default spread and term spread) are useful in selecting funds with superior performance and are valuable for asset allocation decisions.
This study investigates determinants of net money (fund) flows of Japanese investment trusts. This paper employs a pooled regression technique that can distinguish between the impact on fund flow of raw performance and market-adjusted performance. This paper also investigates the impact of fund affiliation with large financial groups on the flow-performance sensitivity as the Japanese fund industry is often portrayed as being “fee-hungry” where large groups play an influential role.
The primary determinant of future net fund flows is the fund's current raw return, which by itself can explain a large proportion of the variation in net fund flow. Hence, our model's estimates of future fund flows would be of practical use to investment managers when planning asset purchases and managing cash reserves. Interestingly, we find that if a fund is part of a large financial group then its fund flow is more sensitive to its performance.
This paper decomposes the cash component of earnings and analyzes persistence characteristics and pricing implications of various subcomponents, with particular attention on changes in cash. Changes in underlying fundamentals might dictate changes in cash to new optimal levels. Alternatively, suboptimal changes in cash might result from agency costs allowing managers’ actions to diverge from the best interests of shareholders. We predict and find that both suboptimal increases and decreases in cash bode poorly for future earnings. In fact, we find that suboptimal increases (decreases) in cash have less (greater) persistence than any of the earnings components we study, including accruals and net distributions to both shareholders and debt holders. Market efficiency tests indicate that the market severely punishes firms with suboptimal decreases in cash, but we find no evidence to support the hubris hypothesis that the market overreacts to the earnings implications of unwarranted increases in cash. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
Academics, politicians, and journalists are often highly critical of U.S. firms for holding too much cash. Cash holdings are stockpiled free-cash flow and incur substantial opportunity costs from the perspectives of economics. However, behavioral theory highlights the benefits of cash holdings as fungible slack resources facilitating adaptive advantages. We use the countervailing forces embodied in these two theories to hypothesize and test a quadratic functional relationship of returns to cash measured by Tobin's q. We also build and test a related novel hypothesis of scale-dependent returns to cash based on the competitive strategy concept of strategic deterrence. Tests for both of these hypotheses are positive and show that returns to cash continue to increase far beyond transactional needs.
This paper investigates the empirical determinants of corporate cash holdings for a sample of UK firms. We focus on the importance of managerial ownership among other corporate governance characteristics including board structure and ultimate controllers of companies. We present evidence of a significant non-monotonic relation between managerial ownership and cash holdings. In addition, we observe that the way in which managerial ownership exerts influence on cash holdings does not change with board composition and, in general, the presence of ultimate controllers. The results reveal that firms' growth opportunities, cash flows, liquid assets, leverage and bank debt are important in determining cash holdings. Our analysis also suggests that firm heterogeneity and endogeneity are crucial in analysing the cash structure of firms.
This paper investigates the determinants of corporate cash holdings in EMU countries. Our results suggest that cash holdings are positively affected by the investment opportunity set and cash flows and negatively affected by asset's liquidity, leverage and size. Bank debt and cash holdings are negatively related, which supports that a close relationship with banks allows the firm to hold less cash for precautionary reasons. Firms in countries with superior investor protection and concentrated ownership hold less cash, supporting the role of managerial discretion agency costs in explaining cash levels. Capital markets development has a negative impact on cash levels, contrary to the agency view.
I. Introduction, 413. — II. A model of cash flows and the costs of cash management for business firms, 416; assumptions underlying
the model, 417; optimal values of the policy parameters, 420; some properties of the solution, 423; implications for the demand
for money by firms, 425; extension to allow for non-zero drift, 427.— III. The applicability of the model, 429. — Appendix,
433.
Introduction, 545. — I. A simple model, 545. — II. Some consequences of the analysis, 549. — III. The simple model and reality,
552.
We examine whether and how a U.S. cross-listing mitigates the risk that insiders will turn their firm's cash holdings into private benefits. We find strong evidence that the value investors attach to excess cash reserves is substantially larger for foreign firms listed on U.S. exchanges and over the counter than for their domestic peers. Further, we show that this excess-cash premium stems not only from the strength of U.S. legal rules and disclosure requirements, but also from the greater informal monitoring pressure that accompanies a U.S. listing. Overall, since investors' valuation of excess cash mirrors how they expect the cash to be used, our analysis shows that a U.S. listing constrains insiders' inefficient allocation of corporate cash reserves significantly.
We find that aggregate net equity fund flows are strongly negatively correlated with changes in expected future stock market volatility as measured by the VIX. Implying that investor purchase decisions are primarily driven by returns and sale decisions by risk perceptions, we further find that changes in the VIX primarily impact aggregate equity mutual fund redemptions with little impact on inflows while stock market returns impact inflows but not outflows. We also find that changes in the VIX are positively correlated with the degree of portfolio rebalancing. While the impact on outflows is much larger, both fund inflows and outflows tend to increase (decrease) when the VIX increases (decreases). Aside from possibly the change in civilian employment, we find no evidence that macroeconomic variables and consumer sentiment have an independent impact on mutual fund flows after controlling for the VIX and stock market returns.
This paper presents an overview of the European mutual fund industry and investigates mutual fund performance using a survivorship bias controlled sample of 506 funds from the five most important mutual fund countries. The latter is done using the Carhart (1997) 4-factor asset-pricing model. In addition we investigate whether European fund managers exhibit ‘hot hands’, persistence in performance. Finally the influence of fund characteristics on risk-adjusted performance is considered. Our overall results suggest that European mutual funds, and especially small cap funds are able to add value, as indicated by their positive after cost alphas. If we add back management fees, four out of five countries exhibit significant out-performance at an aggregate level. Finally, we detect strong persistence in mean returns for funds investing in the UK. Our results deviate from most US studies that argue mutual funds under-perform the market by the amount of expenses they charge.
"This paper analyses the mutual fund industry for 20 countries using a new database of more than 50,000 mutual funds. The results suggest that more developed industries provide more benefits to investors as they diversify more internationally, charge lower annual charges and present more product sophistication. The results also have important policy implications by emphasising the role of competition and contestability in industry development. Fewer barriers to entry are positively associated with a larger industry, and concomitantly with more efficiency in terms of returns and fees." Copyright (c) 2007 The Author Journal compilation (c) 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
The paper investigates the time-varying correlation between stock market prices and oil prices for oil-importing and oil-exporting countries. A DCC-GARCH-GJR approach is employed to test the above hypothesis based on data from six countries; Oil-exporting: Canada, Mexico, Brazil and Oil-importing: USA, Germany, Netherlands. The contemporaneous correlation results show that i) although time-varying correlation does not differ for oil-importing and oil-exporting economies, ii) the correlation increases positively (negatively) in respond to important aggregate demand-side (precautionary demand) oil price shocks, which are caused due to global business cycle's fluctuations or world turmoil (i.e. wars). Supply-side oil price shocks do not influence the relationship of the two markets. The lagged correlation results show that oil prices exercise a negative effect in all stock markets, regardless the origin of the oil price shock. The only exception is the 2008 global financial crisis where the lagged oil prices exhibit a positive correlation with stock markets. Finally, we conclude that in periods of significant economic turmoil the oil market is not a "safe haven" for offering protection against stock market losses.
We investigate how corporate governance impacts firm value by comparing the value and use of cash holdings in poorly and well-governed firms. We show that governance has a substantial impact on value through its impact on cash: 0.42 to $0.88. Good governance approximately doubles this value. Furthermore, we show that firms with poor corporate governance dissipate cash quickly in ways that significantly reduce operating performance. This negative impact of large cash holdings on future operating performance is cancelled out if the firm is well governed.
Using governance metrics based on antitakeover provisions and inside ownership, we find that firms with weaker corporate governance structures actually have smaller cash reserves. When distributing cash to shareholders, firms with weaker governance structures choose to repurchase instead of increasing dividends, avoiding future payout commitments. The combination of excess cash and weak shareholder rights leads to increases in capital expenditures and acquisitions. Firms with low shareholder rights and excess cash have lower profitability and valuations. However, there is only limited evidence that the presence of excess cash alters the overall relation between governance and profitability. In the US, weakly controlled managers choose to spend cash quickly on acquisitions and capital expenditures, rather than hoard it.
This paper models the precautionary motive for a firm's cash holdings. A two-period investment model shows that the cash holdings of financially constrained firms are sensitive to cash flow volatility because financial constraints create an intertemporal trade-off between current and future investments. When future cash flow risk cannot be fully diversifiable, this intertemporal trade-off gives constrained firms the incentives of precautionary savings: they increase their cash holdings in response to increases in cash flow volatility. However, there is no systematic relationship between cash holdings and cash flow volatility for unconstrained firms. We test the empirical implications of our theory using quarterly information from a sample of U.S. publicly traded companies from 1997 to 2002, and find that the empirical evidence supports our theory.
We use mutual fund flows as a measure of individual investor sentiment for different stocks, and find that high sentiment predicts low future returns. Fund flows are dumb money–by reallocating across different mutual funds, retail investors reduce their wealth in the long run. This dumb money effect is related to the value effect: high sentiment stocks tend to be growth stocks. High sentiment also is associated with high corporate issuance, interpretable as companies increasing the supply of shares in response to investor demand.
US corporations hold significant amounts of cash on their balance sheets. This paper develops and tests the hypothesis that the magnitude of US multinational cash holdings are, in part, a consequence of the tax costs associated with repatriating foreign income. Consistent with this hypothesis, firms facing higher repatriation taxes hold higher levels of cash, hold this cash abroad, and hold this cash in affiliates that trigger high tax costs when repatriating earnings. In addition, less financially constrained firms and those that are more technology intensive exhibit a higher sensitivity of affiliate cash holdings to repatriation tax burdens.
This paper integrates elements from the theory of agency, the theory of property rights and the theory of finance to develop a theory of the ownership structure of the firm. We define the concept of agency costs, show its relationship to the ‘separation and control’ issue, investigate the nature of the agency costs generated by the existence of debt and outside equity, demonstrate who bears these costs and why, and investigate the Pareto optimality of their existence. We also provide a new definition of the firm, and show how our analysis of the factors influencing the creation and issuance of debt and equity claims is a special case of the supply side of the completeness of markets problem.The directors of such [joint-stock] companies, however, being the managers rather of other people's money than of their own, it cannot well be expected, that they should watch over it with the same anxious vigilance with which the partners in a private copartnery frequently watch over their own. Like the stewards of a rich man, they are apt to consider attention to small matters as not for their master's honour, and very easily give themselves a dispensation from having it. Negligence and profusion, therefore, must always prevail, more or less, in the management of the affairs of such a company.Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776, Cannan Edition(Modern Library, New York, 1937) p. 700.
COMPUSTAT data on 12,000 firms for the years 1961-92 indicate that large firms hold less cash as a percentage of sales than small ones. Whether comparisons are made within or across industries, the elasticity of cash balances with respect to sales is about 0.8. Firms headquartered in countries with high wages hold more money for a given level of sales, a finding consistent with the idea that time can substitute for money in the provision of transactions services. The estimates are consistent with both scale economies in the holding of money and secular declines in velocity. Copyright 1997 by the University of Chicago.
Gruber (1996) and Zheng (1999) report that investors channel money toward mutual funds that subsequently perform well. Sapp and Tiwari (2004) find that this "smart money" effect no longer holds after controlling for stock return momentum. While prior work uses quarterly U.S. data, we employ a British data set of monthly fund inflows and outflows differentiated between individual and institutional investors. We document a robust smart money effect in the United Kingdom. The effect is caused by buying (but not selling) decisions of both individuals and institutions. Using monthly data available post-1991 we show that money is comparably smart in the United States. Copyright 2008 by The American Finance Association.
Agency theories predict that the value of corporate cash holdings is less in countries with poor investor protection because of the greater ability of controlling shareholders to extract private benefits from cash holdings in such countries. Using various specifications of the valuation regressions of Fama and French (1998) , we find that the relation between cash holdings and firm value is much weaker in countries with poor investor protection than in other countries. In further support of the importance of agency theories, the relation between dividends and firm value is weaker in countries with stronger investor protection. Copyright 2006 by The American Finance Association.
We examine the determinants and implications of holdings of cash and marketable" securities by publicly traded U.S. firms in the 1971-1994 period. Firms with strong growth" opportunities and riskier cash flows hold relatively high ratios of cash to total assets. Firms" that have the greatest access to the capital markets (e.g. large firms and those with credit" ratings) tend to hold lower ratios of cash to total assets. These results are consistent with the" view that firms hold liquid assets to ensure that they will be able to keep investing when cash" flow is too low relative to planned investment and when outside funds are expensive. The" short run impact of excess cash on capital expenditures, acquisition spending and payouts to" shareholders is small. The main reason that firms experience large changes in excess cash is" the occurrence of operating losses. There is no evidence that risk management and cash" holdings are substitutes.
Using a sample free of survivor bias, the author demonstrates that common factors in stock returns and investment expenses almost completely explain persistence in equity mutual funds' mean and risk-adjusted returns. Darryll Hendricks, Jayendu Patel, and Richard Zeckhauser's (1993) 'hot hands' result is mostly driven by the one-year momentum effect of Narasimham Jegadeesh and Sheridan Titman (1993), but individual funds do not earn higher returns from following the momentum strategy in stocks. The only significant persistence not explained is concentrated in strong underperformance by the worst-return mutual funds. The results do not support the existence of skilled or informed mutual fund portfolio managers. Copyright 1997 by American Finance Association.