We argue that the deregulation leading up to the Big Bang has played a major role in the current banking problems. This deregulation allowed large corporations to quickly switch from depending on banks to relying on capital market financing. We present evidence showing that large Japanese...

We study the interplay between corporate liquidity and asset reallocation opportunities. Our model shows that financially distressed firms are acquired by liquid firms in their industries even when there are no operational synergies associated with the merger. We call these transactions...

We argue that a firm's aggregate risk is a key determinant of whether it manages its future liquidity needs through cash reserves or bank lines of credit. Banks create liquidity for firms by pooling their idiosyncratic risks. As a result, firms with high aggregate risk find it costly to get...

Much of corporate finance is concerned with the impact of financing constraints on firms. However, the literature on financing constraints largely ignores the intertemporal implications of those constraints; in particular, how future financing constraints affect current investment decisions. We...

In this paper, we propose a bank-based explanation for the decade-long Japanese slowdown following the asset price collapse in the early 1990s. We start with the well-known observation that most large Japanese banks were only able to comply with capital standards because regulators were lax in...

We model the interplay between cash and debt policies in the presence of financial constraints. While saving cash allows financially constrained firms to hedge against future income shortfalls, reducing debt - "saving borrowing capacity" - is a more effective way of securing future investment in...

This paper proposes a theory of corporate liquidity demand and provides new evidence on corporate cash policies. Firms have access to valuable investment opportunities, but potentially cannot fund them with the use of external finance. Firms that are financially unconstrained can undertake all...

Ensuring that a firm has sufficient liquidity to finance valuable projects that occur in the future is at the heart of the practice of financial management. Yet, while discussion of these issues goes back at least to Keynes (1936), a substantial literature on the ways in which firms manage...

We propose and test a theory of corporate liquidity management in which credit lines provided by banks to firms are a form of monitored liquidity insurance. Bank monitoring and resulting credit line revocations help control illiquidity-seeking behavior by firms. Firms with high liquidity risk...