IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ehl/lserod/24643.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

A model of corporate liquidity

Author

Listed:
  • Anderson, Ronald W.
  • Carverhill, Andrew

Abstract

We study a continuous time model of a levered firm with fixed assets generating a cash flow which fluctuates with business conditions. Since external finance is costly, the firm holds a liquid (cash) reserve to help survive periods of poor business conditions. Holding liquid assets inside the firm is costly as some of the return on such assets is dissipated due to agency problems. We solve for the firms optimal dividend, share issuance, and liquid asset holding policies. The firm optimally targets a level of liquid assets which is a non-monotonic function of business conditions. In good times, the firm does not need a high liquidity reserve, but as conditions deteriorate, it will target higher reserve. In very poor conditions, the firm will declare bankruptcy, usually after it has depleted its liquidity reserve. Our model can predict liquidity holdings, leverage ratios, yield spreads, expected default probabilities, expected loss given default and equity volatilities all in line with market experience. We apply the model to examine agency conflicts associated with the liquidity re-serve, and some associated debt covenants. We see that a restrictive covenant applied to the liquidity reserve will often enhance the debt value as well as the equity value.

Suggested Citation

  • Anderson, Ronald W. & Carverhill, Andrew, 2005. "A model of corporate liquidity," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 24643, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:24643
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/24643/
    File Function: Open access version.
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Viral Acharya & Jing-zhi Huang & Marti Subrahmanyam & Rangarajan Sundaram, 2006. "When does Strategic Debt-service Matter?," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 29(2), pages 363-378, October.
    2. Merton H. Miller & Daniel Orr, 1966. "A Model of the Demand for Money by Firms," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 80(3), pages 413-435.
    3. Dittmar, Amy & Mahrt-Smith, Jan & Servaes, Henri, 2003. "International Corporate Governance and Corporate Cash Holdings," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 38(1), pages 111-133, March.
    4. Bengt Holmstrom & Jean Tirole, 1998. "Private and Public Supply of Liquidity," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 106(1), pages 1-40, February.
    5. Radner, Roy & Shepp, Larry, 1996. "Risk vs. profit potential: A model for corporate strategy," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 20(8), pages 1373-1393, August.
    6. Heitor Almeida & Murillo Campello & Michael S. Weisbach, 2002. "Corporate Demand for Liquidity," NBER Working Papers 9253, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Leland, Hayne E, 1994. "Corporate Debt Value, Bond Covenants, and Optimal Capital Structure," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 49(4), pages 1213-1252, September.
    8. Opler, Tim & Pinkowitz, Lee & Stulz, Rene & Williamson, Rohan, 1999. "The determinants and implications of corporate cash holdings," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(1), pages 3-46, April.
    9. Weiss, Lawrence A., 1990. "Bankruptcy resolution: Direct costs and violation of priority of claims," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 285-314, October.
    10. Rochet, Jean Charles & Villeneuve, Stéphane, 2004. "Liquidity Risk and Corporate Demand for Hedging and Insurance," CEPR Discussion Papers 4755, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    11. Warner, Jerold B, 1977. "Bankruptcy Costs: Some Evidence," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 32(2), pages 337-347, May.
    12. Froot, Kenneth A & Scharfstein, David S & Stein, Jeremy C, 1993. "Risk Management: Coordinating Corporate Investment and Financing Policies," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 48(5), pages 1629-1658, December.
    13. Kim, Chang-Soo & Mauer, David C. & Sherman, Ann E., 1998. "The Determinants of Corporate Liquidity: Theory and Evidence," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 33(3), pages 335-359, September.
    14. Morellec, Erwan, 2001. "Asset liquidity, capital structure, and secured debt," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(2), pages 173-206, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Yann Braouezec & Charles-Albert Lehalle, 2010. "Corporate Liquidity, Dividend Policy And Default Risk: Optimal Financial Policy And Agency Costs," International Journal of Theoretical and Applied Finance (IJTAF), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 13(04), pages 537-576.
    2. Anderson, Ronald W. & Hamadi, Malika, 2009. "Large powerful shareholders and cash holding," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 24422, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    3. Ronald Anderson & Malika Hamadi, 2007. "Ownership, Control and Liquidity," LSF Research Working Paper Series 07-08, Luxembourg School of Finance, University of Luxembourg.
    4. Anderson, Ronald & Hamadi, Malika, 2009. "Large powerful shareholders and cash holding," CEPR Discussion Papers 7291, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    5. Malika Hamadi & Ronald W. Anderson, 2009. "Large powerful shareholders and cash holding," LSF Research Working Paper Series 09-04, Luxembourg School of Finance, University of Luxembourg.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Anderson, Ronald & Carverhill, Andrew, 2005. "A Model of Corporate Liquidity," CEPR Discussion Papers 4994, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    2. Anderson, Ronald W. & Carverhill, Andrew, 2006. "Liquidity and capital structure," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 24632, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    3. Anderson, Ronald & Carverhill, Andrew, 2007. "Liquidity and Capital Structure," CEPR Discussion Papers 6044, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    4. Heitor Almeida & Murillo Campello & Igor Cunha & Michael S. Weisbach, 2014. "Corporate Liquidity Management: A Conceptual Framework and Survey," Annual Review of Financial Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 6(1), pages 135-162, December.
    5. Robin Döttling & Tomislav Ladika & Enrico Perotti, 2016. "The (Self-)Funding of Intangibles," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 16-093/IV, Tinbergen Institute.
    6. Décamps, Jean-Paul & Mariotti, Thomas & Rochet, Jean-Charles & Villeneuve, Stéphane, 2008. "Free Cash-Flow, Issuance Costs and Stock Price Volatility," IDEI Working Papers 518, Institut d'Économie Industrielle (IDEI), Toulouse.
    7. Halil Ibrahim Aydin & Cafer Kaplan & Mehtap Kesriyeli & Erdal Ozmen & Cihan Yalcin & Serkan Yigit, 2006. "Corporate Sector Financial Structure in Turkey : A Descriptive Analysis," Working Papers 0607, Research and Monetary Policy Department, Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey.
    8. Viral Acharya & Sergei A. Davydenko & Ilya A. Strebulaev, 2012. "Cash Holdings and Credit Risk," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 25(12), pages 3572-3609.
    9. Koussis, Nicos & Martzoukos, Spiros H. & Trigeorgis, Lenos, 2017. "Corporate liquidity and dividend policy under uncertainty," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 221-235.
    10. Ilya A. Strebulaev, 2007. "Do Tests of Capital Structure Theory Mean What They Say?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 62(4), pages 1747-1787, August.
    11. Heitor Almeida & Murillo Campello & Michael S. Weisbach, 2002. "Corporate Demand for Liquidity," NBER Working Papers 9253, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Koussis, Nicos & Martzoukos, Spiros H. & Trigeorgis, Lenos, 2017. "Corporate liquidity and dividend policy under uncertainty," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 200-214.
    13. Lins, Karl V. & Servaes, Henri & Tufano, Peter, 2010. "What drives corporate liquidity? An international survey of cash holdings and lines of credit," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 98(1), pages 160-176, October.
    14. Acharya, Viral V. & Almeida, Heitor & Campello, Murillo, 2007. "Is cash negative debt? A hedging perspective on corporate financial policies," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 16(4), pages 515-554, October.
    15. Cafer Kaplan & Erdal Ozmen & Cihan Yalcin, 2006. "The Determinants and Implications of Financial Asset Holdings of Non-Financial Firms in Turkey : An Emprical Investigation," Working Papers 0606, Research and Monetary Policy Department, Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey.
    16. Hou, Canran & Liu, Huan, 2020. "Foreign residency rights and corporate cash holdings," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    17. Almeida, Heitor & Campello, Murillo & Weisbach, Michael S., 2011. "Corporate financial and investment policies when future financing is not frictionless," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 17(3), pages 675-693, June.
    18. Thakur, Bhanu Pratap Singh & Kannadhasan, M., 2019. "Corruption and cash holdings: Evidence from emerging market economies," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 1-17.
    19. Amess, Kevin & Banerji, Sanjay & Lampousis, Athanasios, 2015. "Corporate cash holdings: Causes and consequences," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 421-433.
    20. Pedro J. García‐Teruel & Pedro Martínez‐Solano, 2008. "On the Determinants of SME Cash Holdings: Evidence from Spain," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(1‐2), pages 127-149, January.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • G30 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:24643. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: LSERO Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lsepsuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.