Can Mistargeting Destroy Social Capital and Stimulate Crime? Evidence from a Cash Transfer Program in Indonesia Cash transfer programs can provide important financial support for poor households in developing countries and are becoming increasingly common. However the potential for mistargeting of program funds is high. This paper focuses on the social consequences arising from misallocation of...

O ver the past several years, Taylor rules have attracted increased attention of analysts, policymakers, and the financial press. Taylor rules recommend a setting for the level of the federal funds rate based on the state of the economy. For instance, they may recommend raising the federal funds rate when inflation is above target or lowering the federal funds rate when a recession appears to b...

Cash and cheques were virtually the only means of payment available to most Australians until Bankcard credit cards were introduced a little over 20 years ago. Only in the past decade or so has there been a credible and concerted challenge to the dominant role of cheques for non-cash payments. Today we are seeing the emergence of many alternative payment arrangements; at the same time, banks an...

U.S. multinational corporations (MNCs) hold significant amounts of cash abroad. Using a handcollected sample of large U.S. MNCs, we find that the percentage of cash trapped overseas has a significantly negative impact on the market value of a firm’s cash holdings. Such negative effect is more pronounced when firms are subject to higher repatriation tax rate, when firms have higher costs of rais...

Using a sample of U.K. bidder companies from 1984 through 2007, we find that announcement returns are better for bidders of higher excess cash reserve. This suggests that acquisitions by high excess cash reserve bidders are not necessarily value-decreasing as is suggested by the agency theory and found in the U.S. market. Managers may need cash to ensure that all potential good investment oppor...

In this paper, we investigate the behavioral and statistical characteristics of cash flows for stable value funds provided by numerous U.S. employee benefit plans. We analyze participant-initiated aggregated flow data, representing approximately 80% market large employer plans with stand-alone wraps within a 401(k) offering. By leveraging unique dataset contextualizing ecosystem, examine lapse ...

Rhodes-Kropf and Viswanathan (2004) suggest an adverse selection role of corporate cash reserve. Specifically, if investors know a bidder does not have to issue to invest, an attempt to do so sends a strong pessimistic signal of overvaluation. Despite its intuitiveness, this notion has not been explicitly studied in the empirical literature. Using a sample of acquisitions that are solely financ...