respectively. While retaining full responsibility for this paper, the authors would like to thank William Beranek, Dan Givoly, Jeffrey Jaffe, William Margrabe, and anonymous JFQA referees for their comments on earlier drafts of the paper. The authors also thank J. Rock Chung for his assistance in computer work.
a b s t r a c tThis paper examines whether cultural dimensions explain the variation in corporate cash holdings around the world as well as within the United States. We establish four major findings. First, in an international setting, corporate cash holdings are negatively associated with individualism and positively associated with uncertainty-avoidance. Second, individualism and uncertainty avoidance influence the precautionary motive for holding cash. Third, firms in individualistic states in the United States hold less cash than firms in collectivistic states. Fourth, we show that individualism is positively related to the firm's capital expenditures, acquisitions, and repurchases while uncertainty avoidance is negatively related. Our findings remain unchanged after controlling for governance factors, firm attributes, and country characteristics.
Price limit advocates claim that price limits decrease stock price volatility, counter overreaction, and do not interfere with trading activity. Conversely, price limit critics claim that price limits cause higher volatility levels on subsequent days (volatility spillover hypothesis), prevent prices from efficiently reaching their equilibrium level (delayed price discovery hypothesis), and interfere with trading due to limitations imposed by price limits (trading interference hypothesis). Empirical research does not provide conclusive support for either positions. We examine the Tokyo Stock Exchange price limit system to test these hypotheses. Our evidence supports all three hypotheses suggesting that price limits may be ineffective.
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