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Discussion Paper
U.S. Corporations' Repatriation of Offshore Profits: Evidence from 2018
We investigate how companies with large holdings of cash abroad have used those funds following the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), which eliminated prior tax disincentives on the repatriation of foreign earnings.
Working Paper
The insensitivity of investment to interest rates: Evidence from a survey of CFOs
A fundamental tenet of investment theory and the traditional theory of monetary policy transmission is that investment expenditures by businesses are negatively affected by interest rates. Yet, a large body of empirical research offer mixed evidence, at best, for a substantial interest-rate effect on investment. In this paper, we examine the sensitivity of investment plans to interest rates using a set of special questions asked of CFOs in the Global Business Outlook Survey conducted in the third quarter of 2012. Among the more than 500 responses to the special questions, we find that most ...
Discussion Paper
Do CFOs Think Investment is Sensitive to Interest Rules?
This piece presents results from ongoing research that takes a new look at the sensitivity of a business's capital expenditures to changes in interest rates.
Working Paper
The evolution of a financial crisis: panic in the asset-backed commercial paper market
The $350 billion contraction in the asset-backed commercial paper (ABCP) market in the last five months of 2007 played a central role in transforming concerns about the credit quality of mortgage-related assets into a global financial crisis. This paper attempts to better understand why the substantial contraction in ABCP occurred by measuring and analyzing runs on ABCP programs over the period from August 2007 through December 2007. While it has been suggested that commercial paper programs, like commercial banks, may be prone to runs, we are the first to conduct a comprehensive empirical ...
Working Paper
How effective were the Federal Reserve emergency liquidity facilities?: evidence from the Asset-Backed Commercial Paper Money Market Mutual Fund Liquidity Facility
Following the failure of Lehman Brothers in September 2008, short-term credit markets were severely disrupted. In response, the Federal Reserve implemented new and unconventional facilities to help restore liquidity. Many existing analyses of these interventions are confounded by identification problems because they rely on aggregate data. Two unique micro datasets allow us to exploit both time series and cross-sectional variation to evaluate one of the most unusual of these facilities - the Asset-Backed Commercial Paper Money Market Mutual Fund Liquidity Facility (AMLF). The AMLF extended ...
Working Paper
Firm volatility and banks: evidence from U.S. banking deregulation
This paper exploits the staggered timing of state-level banking deregulation in the United States during the 1980s to study the causal effect of banking integration on the volatility of non-financial corporations. We find that firm-level employment, production, sales, and cash flows are less volatile after interstate banking deregulation, particularly for firms that have limited access to external finance. This finding suggests that bank-dependent firms exploit wider access to finance after deregulation to smooth out idiosyncratic shocks. In fact, short-term credit becomes less pro-cyclical ...
Working Paper
Accounting for racial wealth disparities in the United States
Using data from the Survey of Consumer Finances, this paper updates and extends previous research on the racial wealth gap in the United States. We explore several hypotheses that help explain differential wealth accumulation by racial groups, including the importance of receiving inheritances and other financial support from relatives and the conditions in local real estate markets. By exploring the disparities among white, black, and Hispanic families, we make new contributions to the literature. We find that observable factors account for the entire wealth gap between white and Hispanic ...
Working Paper
'Captive markets': the impact of kidnappings on corporate investment in Colombia
This paper measures the impact of crime on firm investment by exploiting variation in kidnappings in Colombia from 1996 to 2002. Our central result is that firms invest less when kidnappings directly target firms. We also find that broader forms of crime--homicides, guerrilla attacks, and general kidnappings--have no significant effect on investment. This finding alleviates concerns that our main result may be driven by unobserved variables that explain both overall criminal activity and investment. Furthermore, kidnappings that target firms reduce not only the investment of firms that sell ...
Working Paper
Sovereign credit risk, banks' government support, and bank stock returns around the world
We explore the joint effect of expected government support to banks and changes in sovereign credit ratings on bank stock returns using data for banks in 37 countries between 1995 and 2011. We find that sovereign credit rating downgrades have a large negative effect on bank stock returns for those banks that are expected to receive stronger support from their governments. This result is stronger for banks in advanced economies where governments are better-positioned to provide that support. Our results suggest that stock market investors perceive sovereigns and domestic banks as markedly ...