Sapere Aude Research Talent Grant awarded to Ramona Westermann, Department of Finance

Ramona Westermann, assistant professor at the Department of Finance and FRIC center member, has received a Sapere Aude Research Talent Grant of DKK 144,000 from The Danish Council for Independent Research (DFF). Earlier this year, Ramona Westermann received a DKK 1.87 mill. postdoc grant from DFF for the project Can tax incentives explain excessive corporate cash holdings?.

- I am very honored and happy to have been selected as one of the Sapere Aude Research Talent grant recipients and I am certain this grant will further support my career as a researcher, especially in terms of international visibility and activities. In fact, the international aspect is particularly important for this project, for instance so I can collect feedback from researchers from different countries with different tax environments, says Ramona Westermann.

Ramona Westermann’s research project investigates a new, tax-related approach that can help explain why firms world-wide hold excessive amounts of cash and why they do not for instance pay some of the large cash holdings out to their shareholders. Dividends to shareholders are in fact taxed, but if cash is needed later (e.g., for paying back debt or financing investments), the firm has to raise new funds, which does not offer the corresponding tax rebate. Thus, dividend taxation leads to a tax-saving motive to retain cash if the funds are possibly needed later. The project investigates this subject with a theoretical model.

About the Sapere Aude Research Talent Grant
The Sapere Aude Research Talent Grant has as its purpose to provide gifted researchers with the best career conditions, to enable them to deliver stand-out research results at a high international level. Recipients of the Sapere Aude Research Talent Grants are specifically selected from the group of applicants who have been awarded an individual postdoctoral grant by The Danish Council for Independent Research.