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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the asymmetric adjustment of cash holdings in Pakistani firms for above and below target firms.

The study employs generalized method of moments (GMM) to investigate the adjustment of cash holdings.

The study found that the firms which hold cash above the optimal level of cash holdings have higher speed of adjustment than the firms which hold cash below the optimal level. Financially constrained (FC) firms also adjust their cash holdings faster than financially unconstrained (FUC) firms but high speed of downward adjustment does not remain persistent after financial constraints are controlled. Findings of this study reveal this asymmetric adjustment in above and below target firms and extend these results in FC and FUC Pakistani listed firms, respectively.

The conclusion of this study has been derived under certain limitations. There is a vast space to extend this study in different dimensions. Firms operating in capital-intensive industries may provide different results for financial constraints because their policy designing would be quite different from other firms.

This study contributes to cash holdings research in Pakistan by exploring the adjustment behavior of cash holdings across Pakistani non-financial firms using econometric modeling. Downward adjustment rate is supposed to be higher than upward adjustment rate and this rate is tested using dynamic panel data model. Similarly, it is inferred that this relationship holds for above target firms even after including the financial constraints in the presented model.

This study aims to investigate the influence of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) and geopolitical risk (GPR) on corporate cash holding level and speed of adjustment (SOA) in one of the most important emerging markets in the Middle East and North Africa, Saudi Arabia. It also investigates whether Shariah-compliance as well as financial constraints affect the relationship between both EPU and GPR and corporate cash holdings.

The study employs GMM regression considering a sample of 140 nonfinancial firms drawn from the Saudi stock market over the period 2002 to 2019.

The authors find evidence in support of the precautionary motive hypothesis. Facing costly external financing induced by economic policy-related uncertainty and geopolitical tension, Saudi firms tend to accumulate cash as a buffer against negative shocks to their cash flows. The results also show that the positive impact of EPU and GPR on the level of cash holding is less pronounced in Shariah-compliant firms, whereas it is more pronounced in more financially constrained firms. Evidence also reveals that the estimated adjustment coefficients show that Saudi firms adjust more quickly toward their target cash ratio in periods of high economic instability and geopolitical risks.

This study has important implications for managers, policymakers and regulators. For managers, the study is an important reference to understand and design cash management policies by considering factors measured at the country level. More specifically, managers should pay more attention to periods of heightened uncertainties and geopolitical tensions in which the availability of funds is reduced. For policymakers and regulators, this study may be useful in assessing the effect of economic instability on firm’s cash holding decision. Therefore, in an effort to increase the supply of external financing available to firms, policymakers may devise investment friendly environment by controlling country-specific factors.

This paper shows how EPU and GPR as institutional environment factors affect cash holding decision in an oil-rich country.

This paper aims to examine the relationship between cash holdings (CH) and expected equity return in a sample of firms of Pacific alliance countries.

This paper constructed a panel of Pacific alliance firms for the period ranging from 2010 to 2016. This paper estimated different specification models using multivariate regression, and the statistical technique used to validate the hypothesis was panel data.

Results showed that there is a positive relationship between CH and expected equity return (r). The relationship between CH and systematic risk (ß) was estimated and this paper found a positive and statistically significant association. Findings suggest that corporate liquidity contains underlying information that contributes to explain the expected equity return, which, if ignored, can produce quite misleading results.

The results of this study have both academic and practical implications. First, the findings of the research contribute to a better understanding of the asset pricing models in emerging countries. On the other hand, the results obtained in this study can serve shareholders to make better estimations of the expected equity return, so investors can improve the risk-return trade-off due to the model allow a better estimation of the risk-return relation.

The study aims to explain the relationship between accounting and finance through measuring the effect of rational working capital management on profitability.

Employing the methodology of semi-structured interviews with sixteen financial managers.

The findings pointed out the relationship between accounting and finance is complementary, since it supports the accountant by the critical skills and information, like project evaluation, managing the company funding resources and working capital management. These skills put the accountant up to the financial manager stage. The working capital investment and financing policies have the most significant impact on profitability. These policies related to risk and return theory; since the conservative policy will reduce both the risk and return and the aggressive one will have the opposite impact.

It recommends accountants to be in professional stage and increase the profitability of the company to grab both accounting and finance information and skills.

The authors analyze the equilibrium effects of non-tradable assets on optimal policy portfolios. They study how the existence of non-tradable assets impacts optimal asset allocation decisions of investors who own such assets and of investors who do not have access to non-tradable assets.

In this theoretical analysis, the authors analyze a model with tradable and non-tradable asset classes whose cash flows are jointly normally distributed. There are two types of investors, with and without access to non-tradable assets. All investors have constant absolute risk aversion preferences. The authors derive closed form solutions for optimal investor demand and equilibrium asset prices. They calibrated the model using US data for listed equity, bonds and private equity. Further, the authors illustrate the sensitivities of quantities and prices with respect to the main parameters.

The study finds that the existence of non-tradable assets has a large impact on optimal asset allocation. Investors with (without) access to non-tradable assets tilt their portfolios of tradable assets away from (toward) assets to which non-tradable assets exhibit positive betas.

The model provides important insights not only for investors holding non-tradable assets such as private equity but also for investors who do not have access to non-tradable assets. Investors who ignore the effect of non-tradable assets when reverse-engineering risk premia from asset covariances and market capitalizations might severely underestimate the equity risk premium.

The authors provide the first comprehensive analysis of the equilibrium effects of non-tradability of some assets on optimal policy portfolios. Thus, this paper goes beyond analyzing the effects of market imperfections on individual portfolio choices.

This paper aims to investigate the possible non-linear effect of net working capital (NWC) level on profitability for Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region listed companies. Furthermore, the study tests the possible interactive effect of cash levels on the relationship between NWC and profitability.

NWC level is the independent variable and profitability is the dependent variable using two proxies, return on assets (ROA) and returns on equity (ROE). Control variables are size, leverage, gross domestic product growth and sales revenue growth. The generalized method of moments was used to analyze the data of 134 consumer-goods listed firms in 12 MENA countries for the period 2013–2019.

The results demonstrate that NWC levels had a non-linear effect on profitability using ROA as a profitability proxy while results were insignificant using ROE as a profitability proxy. Furthermore, results show the absence of interactive effects between NWC, cash levels and both profitability proxies.

The study fills a gap in the working capital management (WCM) literature by providing new evidence on WCM’s non-linear effect of corporate performance in the MENA region emerging markets using the consumer-goods industry sample. The study contributes to the financial managers’ working capital optimization efforts in the MENA region by providing evidence on the usefulness of WC optimization efforts in the region from a financial performance point of view. According to the researchers’ knowledge, a few studies attempted to investigate this non-linear relationship for neither MENA region countries nor the consumer-goods industry.

The study, by focusing on a context dominated by firms with a concentrated ownership, in which type-II agency problems (principal-principal conflicts) may occur, aims to depict which board configurations may be effective in protecting minority shareholders by mitigating the risk of controlling shareholders' expropriation via cash holdings.

The research adopts a configurational approach and empirically conducts a fuzzy set/qualitative comparative analysis on a sample of 268 Italian listed companies.

The analysis depicts three combinations of board configurations and ownership structures that can be considered effective, namely Active Independent Control, Female Active Control and Double Internal Control.

The study revisits the topic of the risk of expropriation via cash holdings in a type-II agency problem framework and delineates the meaning of board effectiveness in a mature context ruled by family firms, like Italy. Furthermore, by drawing on a configurational approach, it overcomes the causality relationship between each board characteristic and cash holdings policies and reasons from a “bundle” perspective.

The authors measure the cost of equity to earnings yield differential for a sample of 2,035 non-financial firms. In a series of Logit and Tobit regressions, the authors examine if the cost of equity to earnings yield differential is related to dividend policy in the manner predicted by agency theory.

Agency theory says a firm's optimal dividend policy is partially determined by the relationship between the earnings yield and the cost of equity capital. When the cost of equity is higher (lower) than the earnings yield, firms are motivated to (not) pay dividends as this reduces the cost of capital and holding other things constant, increases corporate valuations. The authors test whether managers set dividend policies to maximize the value of the firm.

The study’s findings show that when the cost of equity is higher (lower) than earnings yield, firms are more (less) likely to be dividend payers and the payouts are higher (lower). The results are robust to the inclusion of share repurchases as an alternative to cash distributions. The study’s findings support the cost of equity hypothesis and are consistent with alternative dividend theories.

The study’s findings support the cost of equity hypothesis and are consistent with alternative dividend theories. To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper testing the cost of equity hypothesis.

This paper aims to examine the interdependence of financial decisions (investment, financing, dividends and cash-holding) under financial constraints.

The authors specify and estimate a system of simultaneous equations with panel data and firm fixed effects by three-stage least squares in a sample of firms from 62 countries from 1996 to 2010.

The main findings largely corroborate previous studies regarding the interdependence of financial decisions. The authors also find evidence suggesting that financial constraints have a major impact on firms’ financial decisions. The results also suggest that financial constraints manifest themselves in virtually all firms, indicating that such constraints are a matter of degree and not of kind.

Implications regarding the impact of cash flows on investment and cash-holding decisions are only partially confirmed.

The results are consistent with the hypothesis that financial constraints distort the financial policies of firms. For the purpose of formulating policies that reduce these distortions, the authors emphasize the role of the availability of internal funds and the recoverable fraction of assets in easing financial constraints, thus allowing for greater investment on the part of firms.

The results suggest that regulators should promote policies that reduce the dependence of corporate investment on internally generated cash flows.

Unlike previous studies, the authors account for the direct impact endogenous variables could have on each other. In addition, they explore the impact of each country’s particular legal environment on the pledgeability of assets at the company level.

Drawing on the resource-based view (RBV), this study investigates how tax planning affects the likelihood of financial default in different stages of the corporate life cycle.

Collecting a large sample of US firms between 1989 and 2016, hypotheses are tested using a hazard model. Several robustness and endogeneity checks corroborate the main findings.

The results show that tax-planning firms are less likely to default in the introduction and decline stages, while they are more likely to default in the growth and maturity stages. The findings suggest that introductory and declining firms use cash resources obtained from tax planning efficiently to meet their needs and acquire other useful resources. In growing and mature firms, tax aggressiveness generates unnecessary slack resources, weakens managerial discipline and increases reputational risks.

The results shed light on the benefits and costs associated with tax planning throughout firms' life cycle, holding great significance for managers, investors, lenders and other stakeholders.

This study contributes to the literature that examines resource management at different life cycle stages by showing that cash resources from tax planning are managed in distinctive ways in each life cycle stage, having a varied impact on the likelihood of default. The authors shed light on underexplored cash resources. Furthermore, this study shows the potential linkages between the agency theory and RBV.