scholarly journals The Determinants and Marginal Value of Corporate Cash Holdings: Financial Constraints versus Corporate Governance

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wen-Chien Liu ◽  
Yuanchen Chang
2015 ◽  
Vol 05 (04) ◽  
pp. 1550011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurence Booth ◽  
Christos Ntantamis ◽  
Jun Zhou

Existing studies document that cash holdings are more valuable for financially constrained firms than for financially unconstrained firms. We investigate whether the relation between financial constraints and the value of corporate cash holdings varies across firms with different engagement in research and development activity. Among firms with R&D investment, the marginal value of cash is significantly higher for financially constrained firms than unconstrained ones, whereas this difference is weak among firms without R&D investment. Our findings are robust to alternative measures of financial constraints and alternative methods to define R&D intensity. Our study extends the cash literature by showing that the value of cash holdings is affected by the status of financial constraints and the nature of investment jointly.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yaoqin Li ◽  
Xichan Chen ◽  
Wanli Li ◽  
Xixiong Xu

PurposeThis study explores whether and how Buddhism impacts corporate cash holdings. Buddhist culture affects investors' perception of how cash is deployed and then influences corporate cash holdings. This study first examines the impact of Buddhism on corporate cash holdings and then investigates whether formal governance mechanisms such as legal institutions and institutional ownership influence the relationship between Buddhism and corporate cash holdings.Design/methodology/approachThe authors conduct empirical tests with data on Chinese listed companies between 2006 and 2019. Buddhism is measured with the natural logarithm of the number of Buddhist temples within a radius of a certain distance around a firm's headquarters. The authors adopt the OLS method to regress and take the 2SLS method, Heckman selection model and FEVD approach to address the endogeneity issue.FindingsThe results show a positive relationship between Buddhism and corporate cash holdings. This positive relation is more prominent for firms located in regions with weak legal institutions and for firms with low institutional ownership. Further analysis shows that Buddhism works through the channel of alleviating agency problems and finally improves the value of cash to investors.Research limitations/implicationsThe authors’ findings have important implications. First, this study provides inspiration for incorporating the ethical values of traditional cultures, such as Buddhism, into the corporate governance system. Second, the findings imply that informal institutions can influence corporate financial decisions beyond the effect of formal institutions, suggesting that informal systems should be emphasized when dealing with business affairs in countries where legal institutions are relatively weak. Third, the results suggest the significance of encouraging research on religious culture to explore its active role in corporate governance.Originality/valueThis study illustrates the positive value of religious culture in advancing corporate governance by relating Buddhism to corporate cash holdings based on the explanation of investors' perception. It makes a marginal contribution to the literature that investigates the determinants of cash policies and explores the firm-level consequences of religious culture, adding to the research area of culture and corporate finance.


Author(s):  
Ahmed Hassanein

Corporate cash induces the opportunistic behavior of corporate managers that can create an agency problem. A corporate governance system controls the opportunistic behavior of managers and can affect the firm's policy on holding cash. This study explains how the aspects of corporate governance, country-level and firm-level governance, can affect the corporate policy on holding cash. First, the study provides the nature, definition, and importance of corporate cash holdings. Second, it outlines various motivations and theories behind holding corporate cash. Third, it explains the relation between firm-level governance and corporate cash holdings. Fourth, it focuses on the impact of firm-specific governance attributes on the level of corporate cash holdings. Fifth, it presents the relation between country-level governance and corporate cash holdings.


2019 ◽  
Vol 45 (8) ◽  
pp. 1129-1145 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hatem Mansali ◽  
Imen Derouiche ◽  
Karima Jemai

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine how information asymmetry driven by earnings quality affects corporate cash holdings. It also investigates the role that financial constraints play in this effect. Design/methodology/approach The paper examines a large sample of 6,501 observations of 741 firms listed on Euronext Paris over the period 2000–2015. Earnings quality is computed using the Jones model performance-matched discretionary accruals developed by Kothari et al. (2005): the larger the absolute value of discretionary accruals, the lower the accruals quality. Findings The study finds that firms with poor accruals quality hold more cash and that cash holdings in firms of low reporting quality are higher under financial constraints. These results indicate that firms tend to increase their cash reserves in the presence of high information asymmetry which is notably driven by low accounting quality. The findings also suggest that information asymmetry associated with low reporting quality is greater when firms also have strong financial constraints. The study’s conclusions are consistent with the precautionary motive for cash holdings. Practical implications The results would enhance practitioners’ awareness of the importance of accounting choices in the management of cash policies. It would also give researchers an incentive to further explore how these policies are influenced by the precautionary behavior of managers. Originality/value This paper is the first work to investigate the effect of accruals quality on corporate cash holdings in the French equity market, which typically has a poor information environment resulting in high information asymmetry. Moreover, the role of financial constraints in this effect has not yet been explored.


2018 ◽  
Vol 54 (6) ◽  
pp. 1391-1413 ◽  
Author(s):  
Minshik Shin ◽  
Sooeun Kim ◽  
Jongho Shin ◽  
Jaeik Lee

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