Conference Agenda

This study examines the impact of CEO immigration and cultural heritage, specifically cultural preferences shaped by CEOs’ immigration backgrounds, on the cash holdings of publicly listed firms in the U.S. tourism and leisure sector. Using a panel sample of S&P 1500-listed tourism and leisure firms from 1999 to 2020, the findings reveal that the effect of CEO immigration on cash holdings varies by generation. Specifically, firms led by first-generation immigrant CEOs (CEO-GEN1) tend to hold higher levels of cash reserves. However, these effects gradually weaken across successive generations of immigrant CEOs. These findings align with agency theory, the pecking order theory, and the trade-off theory, contributing to the limited but growing literature on tourism governance. The study offers valuable insights and policy recommendations for stakeholders in the tourism industry, highlighting the role of CEO cultural background in financial decision-making.

This study examines the impact of monetary policy shocks (MPS) on corporate cash policy across U.S. public firms from 1994 to 2019. We find that expansionary MPS are positively associated with future cash holdings, whereas the effect of contractionary MPS is not statistically significant. Our findings remain robust after controlling for potential unobserved heterogeneity and using alternative measures of cash holdings and MPS. In response to expansionary MPS, firms primarily increase their cash reserves through debt issuance and internal cash flows in react to expansionary, while they tend to spend more cash on acquisitions and dividends and less on research and development. Furthermore, the impact of expansionary MPS on the value of cash is negative. Our cross-sectional analysis shows that the effect of expansionary MPS on cash holdings is more pronounced in firms with greater financial constraints, higher firm-specific risks, weaker corporate governance, and greater sensitivity of stock returns to MPS. Overall, our study highlights the important role of expansionary monetary policy in shaping corporate cash management.

Using a proprietary dataset of over 716 million transactions from one of Saudi Arabia’s leading commercial banks, spanning a period of 36 months, the research analyses daily transaction values across different payment methods, including Chip-and-PIN payments, contactless payments, digital wallet payments, and E-commerce payments. Our findings reveal significant gender differences, with males generally conducting higher-value transactions, while females exhibit significantly lower values when using contactless only. The study also highlights that foreigners, despite adopting digital payments for their convenience, tend to have lower overall transaction values compared to citizens, indicating persistent barriers to full financial integration. Additionally, unemployed individuals rely more on digital wallets and e-commerce platforms for managing smaller transactions, emphasizing the role of these technologies in promoting financial inclusion among economically vulnerable groups. Furthermore, younger age groups, particularly those aged 15–24, are more engaged in digital transactions, favouring contactless, digital wallets, and e-commerce payments. In contrast, older demographics demonstrate a preference for traditional payment methods, reflecting a digital divide across age groups. External factors such as the COVID-19 pandemic and geopolitical risks significantly impact transaction values, with the pandemic accelerating the adoption of digital payments and geopolitical risks leading to more conservative spending behaviours. This research provides valuable insights into the dynamics of financial inclusion in Saudi Arabia, contributing to the broader understanding of how demographic factors and external influences shape transaction behaviours in a digital economy.

Leveraging the regulatory intensity measure developed by Kalmenovitz (2023), we capture firms’ regulatory uncertainty using the standard deviation of historical regulatory uncertainty. We find that regulation uncertainty is positively associated with cash holdings. Specifically, one standard deviation increase in regulation uncertainty is related to $19.20 million increase in cash. This effect is driven by adjustments in debt issuance and dividend policies. Moreover, the value of cash is higher when firms experience higher regulatory uncertainty. In addition, we find that regulatory uncertainty is positively related to firm capital accumulation but negatively related to sales growth. Our findings support the precautionary motives of holding cash.