The European Financial Crisis and Firms' Cash Holding Policy: An Analysis of the Precautionary Motive

Abstract

This paper analyzes the relation between the 2008 European financial crisis and firms' cash holding policies from a precautionary motive perspective. After considering how the European financial crisis affected the cash holding policy across different period times, we focus on whether these variations come from changes in precautionary motives. We find a positive effect for the short crisis period and a negative effect for long crisis period for the full sample. We also find evidence that for financially constrained firms, the relation between cash volatility and cash holding is positive for short crisis period but turns negative for the long crisis period.