We examine cash holdings and leverage levels of German listed (non-financial and non-utility) firms. We document a secular increase in cash ratios over the last twenty years (1992–2011), reducing the net debt book leverage ratio for the average sample firm close to zero. Using pre-diction...

Prior studies show that agency conflicts are important in explaining corporate financial policies and that the board of directors is central to corporate governance. In this study, we examine the role of this governing body in the accumulation of cash reserves. Using a sample of 597 French...

Firms with higher inflexibility to adjust their scale hold more cash than flexible firms due to precautionary considerations. This finding is confirmed in a regression discontinuity design that potentially mitigates endogeneity concerns. Consistent with the precautionary motive, inflexible firms...

In this paper, we investigate the impact of government control on investors’ valuation of cash held by listed firms in China. We find strong and robust evidence that government control leads to a lower value of cash. Further evidence suggests that this negative impact is associated with...

This paper empirically analyzes the relationship between firms' competitive position and cash holdings. Firms with a low competitive position have a lower expected cash ow. Therefore, such firms set aside cash from cash flows to avoid default. We estimate a linear cash demand function using two...

We advance the feedback/cash as ammunition hypothesis, namely that firms hold cash to address feedback from stock prices to cash ows and growth opportunities. Firms with more liquid stocks are expected to hold more cash, the opposite of the prediction from a standard information asymmetry...

We examine how firms change their cash policies in response to the downfall of corrupt politicians in China. We find that firms connected to their local government increase cash holdings when high-profile politician downfalls occur in the government. Consistent with the precautionary saving...

We provide one of the first large sample study to examine how firm-level characteristics and national-level institutions affect cash balances in privately held and publicly traded firms and investigate whether the determinants of cash holdings for both types of firms are similar. Using panel...

This paper provides novel evidence on the role of labor unions in firms' corporate cash policy. Examining the unionization rates of firms across 29 countries for the period 2004–2015, we show that firms respond to an increase in unionization rate by decreasing their corporate cash holdings....