A crucial argument for motivating hedging is that it supports corporate investment when internal cash flows are volatile and external financing is costly (Froot, Scharfstein and Stein, 1993). Despite its vast influence, the predictions of this theory have not yet been directly tested. I...

In the mid 2000s the oil and gas industry was hit by what might be best described as a ‘wall of cash' as oil prices successively reached new record levels and access to external financing improved greatly. In this article we investigate what this sudden abundance of liquidity implied for the...

According to a recent conjecture in the literature, earnings have become a poorer proxy for cash flow from operations over time. We find that since 1988, when cash flow statements started to be consistently reported in Compustat, the cash effectiveness of earnings has actually increased for a...