Although compensation contracts rarely include cash holdings as a factor, we show that high cash holdings can be used by executives in the ex post bargaining over compensation. An increase of cash holdings by 10% of assets corresponds to about $2.7 million in additional CEO total compensation....

Debt capacity creates financial flexibility and collateral-based debt capacity is the least sensitive to cash flow shocks. Using variation in real estate prices as exogenous shocks to corporate financing capacity, we investigate the causal effects of financial flexibility on firms' cash...