In this paper, we provide new and complementing international evidence on the relation between cash holdings, corporate governance, and firm value. Our sample consists of a crosssection of 1,875 firms from 46 countries in 2007. We construct eight different measures of firm-level corporate governance based on 64 individual governance attributes provided by Governance Metrics International (GMI)....

Using variations in local real estate prices as exogenous shocks to corporate financing capacity, we investigate the causal effects of financial flexibility on cash policies of US firms. Building on this natural experiment, we find strong evidence that increases in real estate values lead to smaller corporate cash reserves, declines in the marginal value of cash holdings, and lower cash flow se...

This paper explores the hypothesis that the rise in intangible capital is a fundamental driver of the secular trend in US corporate cash holdings over the last decades. Using a new measure, we show that intangible capital is the most important firm-level determinant of corporate cash holdings. Our measure accounts for almost as much of the secular increase in cash since the 1980s as all other d...

Agency problems are an important determinant of corporate cash holdings. For a sample of more than 11,000 firms from 45 countries, we find that corporations in countries where shareholders rights are not well protected hold up to twice as much cash as corporations in countries with good shareholder protection. In addition, when shareholder protection is poor, factors that generally drive the ne...

This paper studies the impact of both solvency and liquidity concerns on corporate …nance. The …rm optimally chooses capital structure, cash holdings, dividends and default while facing stochastic cash ‡ows with two sources of uncertainty. The expected cash ‡ows are uncertain and low pro…tability leads to solvency distress. Moreover, cash ‡ows are subject to liquidity shocks that cause liquidit...

The paper explores the driving forces behind corporate cash holdings by analyzing past literature and extending this research to the behavior of firms after the 2008 recession. I look at the cash to assets and net debt to assets ratios from October 1980 to October 2011 to obtain an understanding of the past and current state of cash holdings. A comprehensive literature review is done on agency ...

Article history: Received 17 January 2014 Received in revised form 28 May 2014 Accepted 29 May 2014 Available online 12 June 2014 This article investigates the impact of the observation that managers can use cash to defer bankruptcy on default risk and corporate financial policies. I show that with managerial cash use to defer default, the impact of cash on default risk depends on two opposing ...

We investigate the financial and real implications of corporate cash holdings over different capital market conditions in the period 1972-2008. A recent theoretical work implies that the value of corporate liquidity varies with the supply of external capital and should be higher during market-wide liquidity shocks. We find that for an average firm a marginal dollar in cash holdings has the same...

Article history: Received 31 August 2009 Received in revised form 24 May 2010 Accepted 2 June 2010 Available online 10 June 2010 We analyze whether the organizational structure of firms (i.e., whether a firm is diversified or focused) affects their cash holdings. Using Compustat firm level and segment-level data, we find that diversified firms hold significantly less cash than their focused cou...