The cash flow sensitivity of cash: evidence from Taiwan

This article examines the role of operating cash flow in firm cash policies using an unbalanced panel of 988 Taiwanese firms. The main findings are as follows: (i) Both financially constrained and unconstrained firms display positive cash flow sensitivity of cash, indicating that capital market friction is prevalent in Taiwan. The result is in sharp contrast to the US result in Almeida et al. (2004) in that only constrained firms save cash out of their operating cash flow. (ii) The estimated cash flow sensitivity of cash for financially constrained firms is significantly higher than that of financially constrained firms in the USA. Our results imply that a financially constrained firm (i.e. a firm that is younger, has a looser relation with banks, or has negative investment-dividend correlation) saves 0.246 to 0.307 dollar out of an additional dollar of operating cash flow. An unconstrained firm saves 0.024 to 0.101 less dollars. (iii) Firms that have ever issued public debt save more cash out of their operating cash flow than firms that have never issued public debt. (iv) Omitting net debt and equity issuances from the cash regression produces downward-biased cash-cash flow sensitivity estimates.