We put the recent increase in corporate cash in historic perspective by studying nearly 100 years of average and aggregate cash holdings. Corporate cash more than doubled in the first 25 years of our sample before returning to 1920 levels by 1970. Since then, average and aggregate patterns...

We study time-series and cross-firm variation in corporate cash holdings over the past century. The recent increase in cash is not unique in magnitude. However, the recent divergence between average and aggregate cash is new and entirely driven by a shift in cash policies of newly public firms,...

We put the recent increase in corporate cash in historic perspective by studying nearly 100 years of average and aggregate cash holdings. Corporate cash more than doubled in the first 25 years of our sample before returning to 1920 levels by 1970. Since then, average and aggregate patterns...