IMF Working Papers

Innovation and Corporate Cash Holdings in the Era of Globalization

By Konrad Adler, JaeBin Ahn, Mai Dao

January 18, 2019

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Konrad Adler, JaeBin Ahn, and Mai Dao. Innovation and Corporate Cash Holdings in the Era of Globalization, (USA: International Monetary Fund, 2019) accessed October 10, 2024

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Summary

We document a broad-based trend in rising cash holdings of firms across major industrialized countries over the last two decades, a trend that is most pronounced for firms engaged strongly in R&D activities. Our contributions to the literature are twofold. First, we develop a simple model that brings together the insights from modern trade theory (Melitz, 2003) with those of contract theory in corporate finance (Holmström and Tirole, 1998) to show that increased openness to trade can result in rising returns to innovation and in turn greater demand for cash as firms insure against innovation-induced liquidity risk. Second, we derive sharp empirical predictions and find supporting evidence for them using firm-level data across major G7 countries during 1995-2014, a period that saw an unprecedented rise in globalization and business innovation.

Subject: Asset and liability management, Currencies, Exports, Imports, International trade, Liquidity indicators, Liquidity management, Money, Production, Productivity

Keywords: Cash amount, Cash flow, Cash holding, Cash holdings, Cash to asset ratio, Currencies, Dummy variable, Estimation result, Exports, Firm FE, Firm's sales share, Global, Imports, Increase in cash holding, International trade, Liquidity demand, Liquidity management, Operating cash flow, Productivity, Productivity draw, R&D, Shock measure, Variation in cash holding, WP

Publication Details

  • Pages:

    62

  • Volume:

    ---

  • DOI:

    ---

  • Issue:

    ---

  • Series:

    Working Paper No. 2019/017

  • Stock No:

    WPIEA2019017

  • ISBN:

    9781484392164

  • ISSN:

    1018-5941