投资者保护、大股东持股比例与现金持有量

以2005～2011年沪深两市A股391家上市公司为样本研究投资者保护、大股东持股比例和现金持有量的关系,研究结果表明,大股东持股比例与现金持有量间呈倒\"U\"型关系。进一步按照投资者保护程度的高低对样本进行分组,研究发现,当大股东持股比例小于48%时,投资者保护程度高的组,大股东持股比例和现金持有量呈显著正相关关系;当大股东持股比例大于48%时,投资者保护程度高的组,大股东持股比例和现金持有量呈显著负相关关系。     

Cash holdings of politically connected firms

Politically connected firms benefit from soft-budget constraints and are unlikely to suffer from liquidity constraints. This argument suggests that politically connected firms should hold less cash than non-connected peers. Another view posits that these firms exhibit acute corporate governance problems. In this setting, politically connected firms are more likely to hold more cash than non-connected firms. Using a sample of 50,119 firm-year observations from 31 countries, we find that politically connected firms hold more cash than their non-connected peers. We put forth two explanations for this result. Firstly, politicians use politically connected firms as “cash cows” to advance their political agendas. Secondly, political connections are conducive to agency problems. In additional analyses, we find that the positive relationship between political connections and cash holdings is stronger when corporate governance is weak.     

Shareholder activism and firms’ performance

Increasing attention to activist campaigns raises the question of whether they lead to better performance. The impact of different motives, demands, and proposals is still unclear and, sometimes, contradictory. We used a unique dataset of activist campaigns targeting firms in the US from 2002 to 2017 and analysed the impact of activism on firm performance, considering their specific demands. Our results show that firms experience a decline in profitability almost immediately after campaigns, although the effect is unclear in the years subsequent to the intervention. Results also suggest that campaigns primarily focused on demanding a change in strategic direction or obtaining board control intensify the decline in profitability. Seeking board representation is the type of demand that effectively increases target firms’ profitability. Our analysis adds to research on shareholder governance and competitive dynamics by highlighting that the type of demand adopted in campaigns impacts differently on firms’ performance.     

Corporate cash holdings: Evidence from Switzerland

This paper investigates the determinants of cash holdings for a comprehensive sample of Swiss non-financial firms between 1995 and 2004. The median Swiss firm holds almost twice as much cash and cash equivalents as the median US or UK firm. Our results indicate that asset tangibility and firm size are both negatively related to corporate cash holdings, and that there is a non-linear relationship between the leverage ratio and liquidity. Dividend payments and operating cash flows are positively related to cash reserves, but we cannot detect a significant relationship between growth opportunities and cash holdings. Most of these empirical findings, but not all of them, can be explained by the transaction costs motive and/or the precautionary motive. Analyzing the corporate governance structures of Swiss firms, we document a non-linear relationship between managerial ownership and cash holdings, indicating an incentive alignment effect and an opposing effect related to increasing risk aversion. Finally, our results suggest that firms in which the CEO simultaneously serves as the COB hold significantly more cash.

激进战略与企业现金持有——预防性动机还是代理动机

以2007-2016年A股非金融上市公司为样本,考察了公司战略激进程度对现金持有决策的影响,并从现金持有价值与竞争效应两个角度,探讨不同公司战略类型下现金持有经济后果的差异。研究结果显示：公司战略越激进,企业现金持有水平越高;并且战略越激进,现金持有价值越高,现金的竞争效应越强。进一步研究表明：随着融资约束和经济政策不确定性的提高,采取激进战略的公司,现金持有水平进一步提高。这说明公司战略是影响现金持有决策的重要因素,而战略激进的公司持有大量现金主要是出于预防性动机,而非代理动机。     

Corporate governance and the sensitivity of investments to cash flows

We find very strong and consistent evidence that investments in Strong‐Governance firms (managers not entrenched) are strongly sensitive to availability of internal cash flows while such sensitivity is not different from zero for Weak‐Governance firms (entrenched management). We interpret this as evidence in support of Kaplan and Zingales' (1997) contention that sensitivity of investments to cash flows is not an adequate measure of financing constraints. More importantly, our findings are consistent with Kaplan and Zingales’ conjecture that the observed sensitivity of investments to cash flows in firms that do not face financing constraints may be driven by excessive risk aversion of managers.     

Financing constraints, cash-flow risk, and corporate investment

Using an analytically tractable two-period model of a financially constrained firm, we derive an investment threshold that is U-shaped in cash holdings. We show analytically the relevant trade-offs leading to the U-shape: the firm balances financing costs for present and future investment, respectively. Our main argument is that financing costs today are more important than the risk of future financing costs. The empirically testable implications are that low-cash firms facing financing costs today are more reluctant to invest if they have less cash, or if their future cash flows are more risky. On the other hand, cash-rich firms facing no financing costs today invest in less favorable projects (i.e., forgo their real option to wait) if they have less cash, or if their future cash flows are more risky. The magnitude of these effects is amplified by the degree of market frictions that the firms are facing.     

The global financial crisis—Market misconduct and regulation from a behavioral view

This paper explores the problem of the global financial crisis of 2008–9, using a behavioral perspective to examine in some detail the issue of governance failures. These failures are evident in the inadequate oversight/regulation provided by US financial market regulators, as well as the inability of financial market participants to adequately judge and assign risk measures to key financial instruments. In total, five elements of behavioral finance are shown to characterize the crisis. The paper shows how specific adjustments in government policy (dealing with market structural imperfections) and company governance (dealing mainly with risk management) can respond to the key elements of the crisis. It also points out that future financial crises cannot be avoided, so that mitigation is the only remedy to deal with such phenomena.     

Does financial reporting regulation influence the value of cash holdings?

We investigate how the value of cash holdings changes following the mandatory adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), which is viewed as an exogenous shock to information asymmetry between firms and outside investors. Using firm-level data from 47 countries, we find that mandatory IFRS adoption has a negative and significant impact on the value of cash holdings. This result suggests that investors reduce their valuation of cash holdings when firms can have access to external financing at a lower cost under IFRS. The negative effect of IFRS is concentrated among financially constrained firms. Furthermore, we show that the effect is more pronounced in countries with strong legal enforcement. Overall, our evidence highlights that financial reporting regulation can have a significant effect on how outside investors value corporate cash holdings across countries.     

Corporate governance post-Enron: Effective reforms,or closing the stable door?

We examine Enron's collapse to provide insights as to the efficacy of recent governance reforms. In doing so, we explore two main issues. First, if recently mandated governance changes had been in place earlier, would they have constrained actions by Enron's management? Second, and more generally, which of the recent governance changes might act to constrain governance failures going forward? Although many aspects of corporate governance failed at Enron, the firm's viability ultimately rested on an inherently risky business strategy, a strategy that the board and others apparently failed to understand. However, it is not apparent that increasing board independence would have changed Enron's strategic direction, or prevented the firm's collapse. From this perspective, many recent reforms, including those mandating specific board structures likely move firms away from their optimal governance structure and are tantamount to closing the stable door after the horse has bolted. We assert that, ceteris paribus, stronger internal controls coupled with reduced potential for conflicts of interest on the part of the external auditor might have constrained management's ability to hide the firm's true financial condition and are likely to constrain aspects of fraudulent behavior going forward.     

A theory of corporate financial decisions with liquidity and solvency concerns

This paper studies the impact of both liquidity and solvency concerns on corporate finance. I present a tractable model of a firm that optimally chooses capital structure, cash holdings, dividends, and default while facing cash flows with long-term uncertainty and short-term liquidity shocks. The model explains how changes in solvency affect liquidity and also how liquidity concerns affect solvency via capital structure choice. These interactions result in a dynamic cash policy in which cash reserves increase in profitability and are positively correlated with cash flows. The optimal dividend distributions implied by the model are smoothed relative to cash flows. I also find that liquidity concerns lead to a decrease of dispersion of credit spreads.     

Optimal investment with fixed financing costs

Models with a premium on external finance produce counterfactual predictions about liquidity management. We address this shortcoming by introducing a fixed cost of increasing external finance into an otherwise standard investment/financing problem. This additional financial friction is well-motivated by case studies and our analysis shows that it generates more realistic predictions about liquidity management: firms hold external finance and idle cash simultaneously, and may invest an additional dollar of cash flow in liquidity rather than repaying external funds or investing in productive capital. In addition to better fitting the stylized facts about the time-series and cross-sectional pattern of liquidity holding, these results may help shed light on the fragility of estimates of investment–cash flow sensitivities.     

CEO organizational identification and firm cash holdings

As the decision-makers and implementers of a firm’s financial strategy, executives play a critical role in cash holding activities, and their psychological characteristics have a major impact on cash holdings. This paper investigates the association between CEO organizational identification and firm cash holdings. The empirical results show that CEO organizational identification is negatively associated with firm cash holdings, and the negative association is more pronounced when the level of financial development is higher and economic uncertainty is lower. Further analysis reveals that the higher a CEO’s organizational identification, the higher the firm’s R&D investment and capital expenditure, and high CEO organizational identification can increase the value of firm cash holdings. Overall, our findings supplement the literature on organizational identification and cash holdings, and on the effect of executives’ psychological characteristics on corporate financial decision-making.