Cash policy and the bank-firm relationship

Bank health affects a firm's cash holding - a healthy bank can result in either more (because of the influential bank power) or less (because of precautionary motive) firm-level cash holding. Motivated by the contrasting views in the existing literature, this paper investigates whether bank policy determines firm-level cash policy. Using Japanese firm-level data over 2000–2014, we find that the difference in bank health effects stems from the firm's investment status. We find that healthy banks induce growing firms to hold more cash while declining firms hold more cash when borrowing from unhealthy banks. Furthermore, we find that banks with more liquidity also induce their growing borrowers to have more cash. Our results are robust to the endogeneity of bank selection. Our study indicates that bank-firm relationship can serve as an advance-signalling device for a firm's shareholder-wealth-maximizing investments and contributes to the literature that explains the cash holding puzzle.     

Firms’ investment decisions in response to demand and price uncertainty

We investigate the effect of demand and price uncertainty on firms’ planned and realized investment from a panel of manufacturing firms. Uncertainty measures are derived from firms’ own expectations about demand and prices and firm's sales. We find that demand uncertainty at the time of planning depresses planned and subsequent realized investment. Firms do not revise their plans due to demand uncertainty at the time of spending, suggesting that reducing demand uncertainty will only have lagged effects on investment. We do not find any effect of price uncertainty. Our results are consistent with the behaviour of monopolistic firms with irreversible capital.     

Fear itself: How risk sensitive firms can give demand shocks bite

Many economists believe that recessions arise when aggregate demand is insufficient to support full employment. However, replicating this intuition within a real business cycle (RBC) model has proven surprisingly challenging. Rather than eliciting a contraction, lower consumer demand leads to greater household savings in many such models, fueling new investment and causing the economy to expand. The present paper proposes a novel way to resolve this apparent paradox: risk-averse firms. In the model to follow, cautious firms reduce their demand for investment prior to a recession. This contraction in the demand for capital overcomes the increased supply arising from consumer savings and restores intuitive business cycle behavior. In particular, the paper demonstrates that the model economy contracts when subjected to an uncertainty shock in consumer demand, mimicking a pre-recessionary environment in which firms, fearing a lack of orders, precipitate the downturn by reducing capital expenditures. These results are consistent with microeconomic evidence that uncertainty, particularly uncertainty about future demand, is the primary reason for firms shedding workers or scaling down operations in advance of an economic downturn. More generally, they imply that firm's attitudes towards risk shouldn't be ignored in modern macroeconomic models.     

Uncertainty and Investment: Evidence from Australian Firm Panel Data

This paper investigates the key drivers of fixed firm investment of listed non‐financial companies in Australia over the period from 1987 to 2009. A Tobin's q model of investment is augmented to account for the effect of economic uncertainty on the investment decision. The effects of Tobin's q, sales and cash flows on firm investment rate are also analysed and discussed. Consistent with existing literature, this research finds clear evidence of negative effects of both macroeconomic and firm idiosyncratic uncertainty on Australian firm investment. However, evidence also shows that firm‐specific uncertainty is more important in explaining firm investment than macroeconomic uncertainty.     

Investment opportunities and cash holdings of firms: an empirical study on Korean firms

We find that the cash flow sensitivity of cash holdings of firms whose investment opportunities are lower is significantly higher by examining a panel data of 898 Korean firms for 1999–2014. The cash flow sensitivity of investment is also found to be lower in case of low investment opportunity. Both findings suggest that firms decide to hold cash in response to an increase in cash flow when they do not have a good investment opportunity. Precautionary motive because of financial constraints and uncertainty, and agency problems, however, are not associated with the cash flow sensitivity of cash holdings. These findings imply that it is necessary to develop new investment opportunities to encourage firms to spend more cash in Korea.     

Investment,devaluation, and foreign currency exposure: The case of Mexico

This paper studies firm-level investment in the wake of the Mexican peso crisis of 1994. While exporters outperform nonexporters in terms of profits and sales after the devaluation, their investment is constrained by weak balance sheets. Specifically, we find that firms with heavy exposure to short-term foreign currency debt before the devaluation experienced relatively low levels of post-devaluation investment. The data also imply that increased sales uncertainty after the peg's collapse deterred investment, particularly in the tradable sector. The results confirm the recent theoretical literature's focus on weak balance sheets as driving the recessionary impact of devaluations in emerging markets.     

The relationship between business diversification and productivity: considering the impact of process innovation at different corporate life cycles

This paper investigates the link between a firm's process innovation (PI) and its segment productivity at different life cycles. The results show that business diversification is negatively associated with a firm's productivity, and further reveal that a firm's PI moderates the above relationship. In addition, the corporate life cycle literature builds blocks for this study to explain that the involvement of administrative costs varies across life cycles when diversified firms get mature and bigger. Our empirical evidence indicates that the potential costs of a complex organisational structure contingent on business diversification at a firm's mature life cycle could be alleviated by the conduct of process innovation. As process innovation at different life cycles may alter managerial incentive that leads to different firm performance, the managerial implication is that diversified firms should appropriately engage in process innovation to prevent unfavourable liability from the development of their businesses.     

Demand shocks and firm-financed R&D expenditures

Business cycles might affect firms'?ability and incentive to perform R&;D. Firms finance most R&;D activities out of cash flow so when cash flow decreases the funds available for R&;D also decreases. This limits the ability of firms to perform R&;D, potentially leading to reduced R&;D expenditures during recessions. However, business cycles also influence the incentive to perform R&;D. The opportunity cost of funds devoted to R&;D falls during recessions since the return on production will likely be lower than during an expansion. During recessions, this provides firms with an incentive to redistribute an existing pool of funds away from production and towards R&;D projects. This paper tests whether the business cycle influences the incentive and ability of firms to engage in R&;D activities, in particular examining whether the response is symmetric across the business cycle.     

Risk sharing and export performance with firm heterogeneity

We investigate how market uncertainty affects the export performance of a firm through financial frictions. We first extend Melitz's (2003) heterogeneous firm trade model by incorporating demand shocks, linking the demand uncertainties to the financing costs of firms. In this extension, the default probability is endogenously determined by a firm's productivity and demand uncertainty. Hence, firms with higher productivity or lower market uncertainty are offered lower interest rates and thus show better export performance. As an application, we also show that a risk-sharing mechanism, that pools default risk for a certain group of firms, lowers the default risk. This mechanism allows banks to charge lower interest rates to the member firms and therefore ultimately improves their export performance in both extensive and intensive margins. We find a real-world example of such a mechanism from business groups in Korea. Using Korean firm-level data, we show that the more diversified the business group, the greater the likelihood that its member firms export and the bigger their export revenues. We also show that our results are robust to alternative explanations for Korean business groups’ export competitiveness.     

AN EMPIRICAL EXAMINATION OF THE HANGOVER EFFECT OF IRREVERSIBILITY ON INVESTMENT

Irreversibility does not only raise the user cost of capital and discourage new investment but also hinders disinvestment because of the hangover effect. This paper derives a theoretical model that separates the impact of conventional convex adjustment costs from the impact of irreversibility, based on which we test the hangover effect of irreversibility by using a panel of Dutch listed firms during 1985–2000. We find that the sample firms cut both the capital stock and the inventory stock facing shocks to sales and cash flow, but they cut the inventory stock by a larger magnitude than they cut the capital stock. Given that fixed investment is more irreversible than inventory investment, the result suggests that the diminished impact of irreversibility provides the firm with more flexibility in responding to uncertainty, which lends support for the hangover effect of irreversibility on investment.     

Does macro-economy have any effect on firm investment-cash flow sensitivities?

We conduct an empirical study on Chinese listed firms’ investment-cash flow sensitivities in different stages of the macroeconomic cycle during 1993–2004, and find that macro-economy has a significant effect on investment-cash flow sensitivities. When economic slowdown occurred between 1998 and 2001, sample firms reduced working capital substantially to maintain some necessary investment level of fixed assets, that is, firms stabilized fixed assets investment by adjusting working capital. However, the sensitivity coefficients of fixed assets investment to cash or sales revenue were not systematically higher in the depressed stage than in the booming stage.      

Macroeconomic Uncertainty,Fund Demand and Corporate Investment

Using a unique set of data on fund use by China’s listed companies, this paper examines how macroeconomic uncertainty works on corporate investment. The study shows that macroeconomic uncertainty affects corporate investment behavior through the three channels of external demand, liquidity demand and long-term fund demand. However, the result is influenced by expectations and can differ across firms depending on their economic cycle, shareholder character, industrial character and the financial constraints they are exposed to. Specifically, high macroeconomic uncertainty can weaken the positive roles of these channels, especially those of external demand and liquidity demand, in driving corporate investment. During economic upturns, the effect of these channels is the most evident among state-owned firms, manufacturing firms and low cash dividend firms. The lessons from this study are that macroeconomic policies should be leveraged taking account of the channels through which economic shocks find their way, and monetary policies have to be implemented by targeting microscopic fund demand.     

产业政策对企业跨界经营行为的影响

基于2006—2015年中国A股上市公司的数据,研究了产业政策对企业跨界经营行为的影响。结果表明:产业政策会引导企业通过跨界经营进入政策支持行业;通过有关联跨界进入政策支持行业的企业的经营绩效会显著提高,而无关联跨界反而会降低企业价值;在产业政策的引导作用下,企业为了政策寻租而采取的无关联跨界行为,既不利于自身的长远发展,又会降低产业政策的效果。     

Domestic R&D,Foreign Direct Investment and Welfare

This paper provides a new rationale to examine the two‐way relationship between domestic research and development (R&D) and foreign direct investment (FDI), as well as their impacts on domestic welfare. Our analysis is based on the strategic interaction in cost‐reducing investment decisions between domestic firms and a foreign firm, which is different from the common factors that are discussed in the literature such as spillovers and technology sourcing. Our results are as follows. We show that domestic R&D investment may either increase or decrease the foreign firm's FDI incentives. Further, depending on the marginal cost of domestic firms, domestic R&D incentives can always increase regardless of the effects of domestic R&D investment on the foreign firm's FDI decision. Finally, we find that domestic welfare improves under domestic cost reduction if the slope of the marginal cost of domestic R&D investment is sufficiently small.     

Innovation,trade and multi‐product firms

This paper contributes to the literature on the relationship between innovation and exports by developing a model that emphasizes the role of product innovation in explaining heterogeneity in export behaviour both across and within firms. The dynamic model assumes that firms invest to maintain and increase the portfolio of products they sell: innovation is a stochastic process whereby the probability to capture new business opportunities is a function of the number of goods already sold. Crucially, the model assumes two independent mechanisms to drive the extensive and the intensive margins of a firm's export. The resulting lack of (built‐in) correlation between the two margins is well reflected in the data and represents the main contribution of our theoretical framework. The model is consistent with several other empirical regularities that characterize multi‐product firms, such as the heavy tail in the distribution of the number of products exported by each firm, the strict hierarchy in the sales of products across markets, the substantial degree of product churning and the highly skewed distributions of export sales.     

R&D investment and internal finance: the cash flow effect

This paper investigates the cash flow effect on R&D investments for firms in Denmark. Evidence is found that internal funds are important in explaining R&D investments, indicating that R&D investment decisions are affected by credit market imperfections. Cash flow sensitivities are larger both for smaller firms and for firms with low debt relative to assets. Furthermore, this effect is also present after controlling for cash flow’s potential role as a predictor of future profitability.     

Information transmission during the trial: The role of punitive damages and legal costs

This paper studies an incomplete information model in which a preventable accident occurred. The judge determining punitive damages observes the firm's (defendant) investment decisions, but is uninformed about the firm's experience adopting safety measures. Our model allows firms to file an appeal if the judge's verdict is incorrect, which the judge may accept or reject. We identify under which conditions a separating equilibrium exists where the firm's investment decisions signal its type to the judge, who responds with a correct verdict, thus avoiding future appeals. Our paper also finds conditions under which a pooling equilibrium exists whereby the firm's investment in precaution conceals its type from the judge, who can respond with an incorrect verdict thus giving rise to appeals. Furthermore, we show that the separating equilibrium is more likely to arise if the percentage of revenue that defendants are required to pay in punitive damages decreases, if the punitive‐to‐compensatory ratio increases, and if the legal cost of filing an appeal increases.     

What Types of Policy Uncertainties Matter for Business?

This paper reports data from the author's original survey of Japanese companies concerning the distributions on subjective uncertainties over economic policies and their effects on business operations. Companies perceive uncertainty over the future course of certain economic policies, such as the social security system and international trade policy. Policy uncertainty regarding the tax system, trade policy and environmental policy can have substantial effects on managerial decisions, especially on equipment investment and overseas activities. According to the companies’ subjective probability distributions on their sales outlook, manufacturers face greater uncertainty than non‐manufacturing companies do. Uncertainty over economic policies substantially reduces the expected sales growth rate.     

Effect of piracy on innovation in the presence of network externalities

This paper analyzes the impact of simultaneous increases in piracy (piracy effect) and network externalities (network effect) on R&D investment. A single firm's R&D investment increases (or decreases) if the network effect (or piracy effect) is dominant. With R&D competition, if the firms “significantly” differ with respect to their R&D efficiencies and if the piracy effect dominates the network effect then the less efficient firm's R&D investment increases and that of the more efficient firm's decreases. In this case, the overall probability of successful innovation increases. The reverse holds if the network effect dominates the piracy effect. If the firms are “less” asymmetric then their R&D investment either increases or decreases depending on the relative strengths of the piracy and network effects.     

Broad-based employee stock options grants and IPO firms

This paper examines the broad-based grant of employee stock options (ESOs) in the period following the Initial Public Offering (IPO). Stock option grants are used to reduce the negative effects of conflicts of interests associated with a firm's going public. The study documents that option grants can be seen as corporate governance instruments for a number of model specifications. Also, it is found that there is a robust relation between option grants and market and accounting returns, respectively. To the best of the authors' knowledge, no previous study has investigated the determinants of the grants of employee stock options in the post-IPO period to both upper-level and lower-level executives during a period of sixteen years. Because the cross-sectional data of this study amply encompasses more than a business cycle it is possible to examine the grants of ESOs across tight and soft labour markets. During the former type of labour market it appears that more options are granted. Also, the empirical results provide evidence that option grants are an increasing function of the employees’ benefits for the firm. Finally, the findings show that cash constrained firms appear to use employee stock option grants in place of cash compensation.