مقاله انگلیسی رایگان در مورد سیاست مالی شرکت و ارزش دارایی نقدی تحت شرایط عدم اطمینان – امرالد 2017

Abstract

In this paper we provide evidence on how firm-specific and macroeconomic uncertainty affects shareholders’ valuation of a firm’s cash holdings. This extends previous work on this issue by highlighting the importance of the source of uncertainty. Our findings indicate that increases in firm-specific risk generally increase the value of cash while increases in macroeconomic risk generally decrease the value of cash. These findings are robust to alternative definitions of the unexpected change in cash. We extend our analysis to financially constrained and unconstrained firms.

Introduction

Recent findings indicate that cash holdings of non-financial firms have dramatically increased. For example, Bates et al. (2009) report that the average cash-to-asset ratio for US industrial firms more than doubled between 1980 and 2006. Current disclosures points to a strengthening of this tend. Non-financial companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index were holding $1.12 trillion in cash and short-term investments in their most recent financial statements, up 59% from $703 billion in the third quarter of 2008 (Monga et al. (2011)). While coping with future uncertainty is the most common explanation for accumulating such reserves, investors who can diversify these risks are questioning the value of these historically high cash reserves 1 Downloaded by University of Newcastle At 01:34 27 February 2017 (PT) (Berman (2011)). Does an added dollar in cash reserves, even in uncertain times, increase firm value by one dollar? Does the valuation of cash reserves depend on the source of uncertainty faced by the firm? These are the primary questions we investigate in this paper