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This study investigates whether firm-level political risk increases managers' propensity to avoid taxes. Using a measure of firm-level political risk developed by Hassan et al. (Quart J Econom 134(4):2135–2202, 2019) and several commonly used measures of tax avoidance, we find that corporate tax avoidance increases with firm-level political risk and that the main results hold in various supplemental and endogeneity tests. In cross-sectional tests, we document that the positive relationship between firm-level political risk and tax avoidance is stronger for lower levels of tax avoidance, and is weaker when firms have superior cash flow performance and higher cash holdings. In addition, we show that the positive relationship between firm-level political risk and tax avoidance is stronger during the Trump administration's trade policy changes as well as during the global financial crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we examine how corporate policies are driven by CEO greed. We hypothesize that greedy CEOs are inclined to implement highly aggressive policies that are beneficial for them but are harmful to shareholders. Specifically, firms with greedy CEOs take excessive risk, make higher investments (R&D and capital expenditure), acquire more debt (both short- and long-term), hoard fewer liquid assets (cash holdings and working capital), and pay less dividend. Using a sample of Chinese firms from 2010 to 2019, the results lend support to our predictions. This work contributes to the literature on upper echelon and agency theory by highlighting how organizational outcomes are influenced by the selfish behavior of greedy CEOs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the determinants and impact of Say-on-Pay (SoP) votes that are mandated by the Dodd-Frank Act. We confirm that vote outcomes are positively related to recent firm performance, and negatively related to CEO compensation in the prior year. We document that greater equity ownership by institutions and outside block holders heightens the vote sensitivities to firm performance and CEO compensation. Our estimates indicate that, despite their non-binding nature, SoP votes are an effective device in monitoring management. SoP vote outcomes have material effects. Firms with adverse voting outcomes exhibit stronger stock and accounting performance in the year following the vote, and are associated with smaller CEO compensation increments. Finally, we find that the increments to cash holding are negatively related, while long-term assets are positively related to SoP vote outcomes. These findings are indicative of a disciplinary shock. Our findings suggest that Say-on-Pay should survive the current efforts to repeal various aspects of Dodd-Frank. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate whether firm-level political risk affects corporate cash holdings. Taking a sample of 5424 US firms with 129,750 firm-quarter observations from 2002Q1 to 2021Q3, we find that cash holdings is higher for firms with greater exposure to firm-level political risk. The positive relationship between firm political risk and cash holdings is consistent for financial constraint and non-constraint firms, high and low growth firms, pro-cyclical and counter-cyclical and competitive industries. Further, our findings are consistent to alternative measures of firm-level political risk and cash holdings. In addition, our findings remain robust with different endogeneity tests: a natural experiment, an instrumental variable approach, and a propensity score matching. Overall, we present novel evidence on the determinants of corporate cash holdings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a customer–supplier matched sample of US-listed firms from 1980 to 2016, we study the corporate cash-holding relationship between suppliers and their major customers. The key findings suggest that the cash-holding levels of suppliers are positively affected by those of their major customers, consistent with the liquidity argument. The effects are more pronounced when the major customers are in more favourable financial conditions and when they are considered more important to their suppliers. Our results are robust to various endogeneity problems and additional tests. Taken together, these results bring forth an important corporate cash-holding link within the supply chain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our study investigates whether agency costs arising from organizational structure in terms of the number of investment layers which connect the parent firm and its lowest-tiered subsidiaries within the corporate pyramid are associated with the value of cash holdings. Using a sample of Taiwanese publicly traded firms, we find that a change of a dollar in cash holdings is associated with less than a dollar change in market value. In line with our expectation, we find that the marginal value of cash decreases with the number of investment layers, supporting the agency theory of excess cash holdings. We also find that the negative association between the number of layers and the value of cash holdings is stronger for firms with high deviation between cash flow and voting rights and for family-controlled firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior literature suggests that R&D-intensive firms hold large amounts of cash due to financing constraints. This paper examines whether such firms could also use cash holdings as a strategic bargaining tool in M&A transactions. Using a large sample of takeover bids announced between 1980 and 2012, we demonstrate that cash holdings positively impact R&D-intensive targets' takeover premiums and announcement-period abnormal returns. These effects disappear in non-R&D-intensive firms. Controlling for various endogeneity and financing concerns, we also find that R&D-intensive firms build up cash holdings in anticipation of becoming a takeover target. Further analysis indicates that in R&D-intensive firms, such cash holdings are valued highly by the market. Taken together, our findings shed new light on the strategic bargaining role of corporate cash holdings in the outcomes of acquisitions targeting R&D-intensive firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we propose an optimal cash holding model which examines the tradeoff between illiquidity and opportunity cost concerns as the benchmark to determine corporate excess cash. Through an optimization process, the optimal cash holdings suggested by our illiquidity-opportunity tradeoff model (IOT model) are endogenously determined. Different from many prior studies, the IOT model not only contains the value of cash, through market-based conception, but also adopts the modified Black-Scholes-Merton default probability of illiquidity. We then compare the IOT model with the Opler et al. (J Financ Econ 52(1):3-46, 1999) model (the OPSW model), which is a widely-used benchmark to determine excess cash, by using data for U.S. public firms from 1984 to 2014. The empirical results show that with regard to financial management the IOT model could be a better alternative to determine excess cash, even in light of different corporate characteristics and performance measures. Our conclusion suggests that while exploiting the value of marginal cash has attracted the attention of many recent studies, exploring the issue of optimal cash holdings is still important in the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study relates a firm's cash holdings and their value to the board of directors' level of education. Using a sample of firms on the Taiwan Stock Exchange during the period from 2006 to 2012, we find that firms with a highly educated board tend to hold more cash and are associated with a higher value of cash. This fact is especially evident among financially constrained firms. Our findings suggest that highly educated boards provide more efficient monitoring and advisory functions, and thus complement corporate governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the joint choices of cash holdings and debt maturity for a large sample of firms for the 1985-2013 period. We find that there is a positive relation between debt maturity and cash holdings. Our results hold after taking into account endogeneity among leverage, debt maturity, and cash holding. We posit that this positive relationship will be found among firms facing financial constraints and we find support for this hypothesis. Our results are robust after we control for agency problems, international taxation, bank loan liquidity covenants and default risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the chief executive officer (CEO) optimism effect on managerial motives for cash holdings and find that optimistic and non-optimistic managers have significantly dissimilar purposes for holding more cash. This is consistent with both theory and evidence that optimistic managers are reluctant to use external funds. Optimistic managers hoard cash for growth opportunities, use relatively more cash for capital expenditure and acquisitions, and save more cash in adverse conditions. By contrast, they hold fewer inventories and receivables and their precautionary demand for cash holdings is less than that of non-optimistic managers. In addition, we consider debt conservatism in our model and find no evidence that optimistic managers' cash hoarding is related to their preference to use debt conservatively. We also document that optimistic managers hold more cash in bad times than non-optimistic managers do. Our work highlights the crucial role that CEO characteristics play in shaping corporate cash holding policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the effects of state ownership, institutions and resource-seeking behavior on post-acquisition stock price returns of Chinese cross-border mergers and acquisitions over the period 1998-2008. Chinese acquiring firms experience negative returns ranging from 2.92 to 10.80 % in 12- and 60-month post-event periods, respectively. State ownership (SOE), interaction between R&D and SOE, formal institutional distance and acquirer size have a positive and significant impact on the long-term acquirer returns. However, the interaction between tangible resources and SOE and acquirer cash holdings appears to have a negative and significant impact on long-term returns. Overall, our results suggest that the state and institutions constitute important sources of long-term value creation for Chinese acquirers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses Taiwanese data to examine the impact of firm-level corporate governance mechanisms on firms' average cash holdings. Specifically, it examines how a firm's number of banking relationships and the percentages of managerial ownership and board ownership impact the firm's level of cash holdings. We document that higher percentages of managerial ownership and board ownership are associated with higher levels of corporate cash holding. Our results are consistent with the notion that managerial incentives and board monitoring are substitutes for each other. The substitution effect is especially pronounced when firms have poorly incentivized managers. We find that firms with a larger number of banking relationships are associated with lower levels of cash holdings. We find no evidence of a bank monitoring free rider problem. We also document a life-cycle effect in the drivers of cash holdings: there are substantial differences in the drivers of cash holdings for firms that have been in business for more than 5 years relative to those that have not been in business less than 5 years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We provide new evidence that firms under weak governance regimes hold less cash than firms operating under strong governance, contrary to previous literature. Our findings also establish that there are two independent effects for the de jure and de facto aspects of governance that protect minority shareholders. Consistent with managerial empire building prediction, our study reveals that firms deplete their excess cash by overinvesting and this effect is exacerbated in countries with weak governance. The excess cash depletion has an adverse impact on firm performance, more so in countries with weak investor protection which is in support of the agency costs explanation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the truth-inducing property of a class of budget-variance-based payment schemes called kinked linear schemes. In these schemes, the manager is either paid a bonus proportional to a favorable budget variance, or charged a penalty proportional to an unfavorable budget variance. With the penalty rate higher than the bonus rate per unit variance, the payment to the manager is piecewise linear in the actual output and kinked at the budgeted output. This paper shows that participative budgeting with kinked linear compensation schemes can induce truthful reporting of expected output from an informed manager even when the manager can shift the underlying output distribution by his unobservable efforts. Furthermore, participative budgeting with kinked linear payment schemes can achieve optimal contracting between a risk-neutral manager and a risk-neutral owner even in a setting where a menu of linear payment schemes cannot. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]