This paper studies the mutual fund industry in 56 countries and tests various hypotheses to explain the extent to which this innovative form of financial intermediation has flourished. Consistent with related findings from the law and economics literature, the mutual fund industry is larger in...

We study a firm that justifies its novel use of equity derivatives as a cash-flow hedging strategy. Our purpose is to understand the challenge of translating risk management theory into managerial action. Cephalon Inc., a biotech firm, bought a large block of call options on its own stock. If...

We review a wide variety of programs that support savings by families, in particular by low- and moderate-income families. These programs range from ones that literally compel families to save, to those that make it hard not to save, make it easier to save, provide financial incentives to induce...

In this paper, we analyze the spending decisions of over 1.5 million Americans who vary in their degree of revealed credit constraints. Specifically, we analyze how these Americans spend their income tax refunds, using transaction-level data from a stored-value card product. Card-holders may...

This paper reports on a small-scale survey of the potential American demand for prize-linked savings accounts, an account that awards prizes as part of the saving product's return. In October 2006, Centra Credit Union launched a prize-linked savings pilot. As part of that initiative, we...

We survey CFOs of public and private firms in 29 countries about aspects of corporate liquidity that cannot be obtained from publicly available data. We find that lines of credit are very important liquidity instruments relative to cash holdings. The median line of credit is equal to 15 percent...

Using a new database, we study fees charged by 46,580 mutual fund classes offered for sale in 18 countries, which account for about 86% of the world fund industry in 2002. We examine management fees, total expense ratios, and total shareholder costs (which include load charges). Fees vary...

In this paper, we examine a little known aspect of mutual fund accounting, whereby funds do not use contemporaneous fund holdings to calculate net asset values. This practice, sanctioned under SEC Rule 2a-4, uses stale portfolio holdings and gives rise to deviations between reported net asset...