Cash holdings and firm value: Evidence for increasing marginal returns

Abstract

Cash is an important strategic asset for firms and scholars have a longstanding interest in the optimum level of a firm's cash holdings. In this study, we revisit the relationship between cash holdings and firm value by conducting a re-examination of Kim and Bettis , who hypothesized and found positive but decreasing marginal returns of cash. We argue and demonstrate that the regression model configuration of Kim and Bettis leads to distorted regression results. Once we adjust their regression model configuration, our results show that the benefits of cash do not diminish but instead increase with increasing cash holdings. In further analyses, we find indicative evidence that these results may be driven by firms with very high investment opportunities. We also employ a larger sample over a longer period of time to corroborate the time generalizability of our findings, we perform several checks to establish their robustness, and we discuss their theoretical implications.