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Working Paper
Who holds cash? and why?
Cash holdings of nonfinancial firms range widely, and are related to firm size, industry and access to the public bond market. Cash holdings are positively correlated with agency proxies, suggesting that firms that cannot borrow easily due to agency problems hold greater cash stocks--perhaps as a cushion to prevent shortfalls in cash flow from impinging on investment. However, this correlation holds only for the very highest cash holders, especially small firms. The group of afflicted firms appears to be less than one-quarter of COMPUSTAT firms. Agency proxies are irrelevant for a large ...
Working Paper
Internal capital markets and investment: do the cash flow constraints really bind?
Lamont (1997) claims to find evidence of credit market imperfections that distort financing and investment decisions of a sample of oil-dependent firms, as investment by non-oil units fell when oil cash flow dropped. However, a simple test reveals that few of these firms behaved in a fashion consistent with binding cash flow constraints. In addition, most were cash rich. The data provide strong evidence against the hypothesis that investment decisions by non-oil units were significantly affected by oil cash flow, or that credit market imperfections are an important factor for this set of ...