Intuition suggests that firms with higher cash holdings should be 'safer' and have lower credit spreads. Yet empirically, the correlation between cash and spreads is robustly positive. This puzzling finding can be explained by the precautionary motive for saving cash, which in our model causes...

We examine firms' simultaneous choice of investment, debt financing and liquidity in a large sample of US corporates between 1980 and 2014. We partition the sample according to the firms' financial constraints and their needs to hedge against future shortfalls in operating income. In contrast to...

This paper addresses the following unresolved questions: Why do some firms issue equity instead of debt? Why did most firms retain their cash holdings instead of distributing them as dividends in recent times? How do firms change their financing policies during a period of severe financial...

This paper addresses the following unresolved questions: Why do some firms issue equity instead of debt? Why did most firms retain their cash holdings instead of distributing them as dividends in recent times? How do firms change their financing policies during a period of severe financial...

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 investigate the liquidity management of firms following the inception of credit default swaps (CDS) markets on their debt, which allow hedging and speculative trading on credit risk to be carried out by creditors and other parties. We find that reference firms hold more cash after CDS trading...

This paper examines the relationship between cash holdings and business cycles between 1976 and 2012, with a primary emphasis on how cash holdings vary during the business cycle and specifically during recessions. Using several different quarterly data sets, findings confirm that cash holdings...

This study examines the revision in cash holdings and the market valuation of investment opportunities of 475 firms added to the Standard & Poor's 500 stock market index from 1980 to 2010. We find that newly indexed firms have evolved to significantly lower cash balances, which we partially...

This paper examines the role of cross credit rating changes on corporate cash holdings policies, focusing on the "big three" credit rating agencies (Standard and Poor's, Fitch and Moody's). Using a hand collected sample of credit ratings for firms listed at the S&P500 we initially verify the...

Using a database of more than 180,000 private companies from 2000 to 2009, we find that the benefits of holding more cash vary substantially with a firm's size and the conditions it faces. Cash holdings matter most for small firms: when there are negative shocks to industry or macroeconomic...