IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cen/wpaper/25-02.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

A Granular Look into Firms’ Cash Portfolios

Author

Listed:
  • Youngsuk Yook

Abstract

This paper uses confidential Census data to provide a granular look into the U.S. firms’ cash holding portfolios encompassing nearly four decades. The data provide information on short-term investment securities held in the portfolios, such as time deposits, commercial paper and government securities in addition to cash. The security-level information reveals that portfolios of the same size can have very different levels of liquidity and riskiness as the composition of securities varies considerably across firms and over time. Firms with strong precautionary motives tend to allocate more toward relatively more liquid and less risky securities. Firms actively rebalance their portfolios in response to changing economic conditions or idiosyncratic shocks to securities they hold. Event studies using shocks to Treasury securities and commercial paper shows firms shifting away from affected securities and simultaneously adjusting weights of other securities.

Suggested Citation

  • Youngsuk Yook, 2025. "A Granular Look into Firms’ Cash Portfolios," Working Papers 25-02, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    • Handle: RePEc:cen:wpaper:25-02
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www2.census.gov/library/working-papers/2025/adrm/ces/CES-WP-25-02.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2025
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Thomas W. Bates & Kathleen M. Kahle & René M. Stulz, 2009. "Why Do U.S. Firms Hold So Much More Cash than They Used To?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 64(5), pages 1985-2021, October.
    2. Mark Gertler & Simon Gilchrist, 1994. "Monetary Policy, Business Cycles, and the Behavior of Small Manufacturing Firms," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 109(2), pages 309-340.
    3. Nilsen, Jeffrey H, 2002. "Trade Credit and the Bank Lending Channel," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 34(1), pages 226-253, February.
    4. Antonio Falato & Dalida Kadyrzhanova & Jae Sim & Roberto Steri, 2022. "Rising Intangible Capital, Shrinking Debt Capacity, and the U.S. Corporate Savings Glut," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 77(5), pages 2799-2852, October.
    5. José A. Azar & Jean-François Kagy & Martin C. Schmalz, 2016. "Can Changes in the Cost of Carry Explain the Dynamics of Corporate "Cash" Holdings?," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 29(8), pages 2194-2240.
    6. Zhiyao Chen & Ran Duchin, 2024. "Do Nonfinancial Firms Use Financial Assets to Take Risk?," The Review of Corporate Finance Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 13(1), pages 1-37.
    7. Charles J. Hadlock & Joshua R. Pierce, 2010. "New Evidence on Measuring Financial Constraints: Moving Beyond the KZ Index," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 23(5), pages 1909-1940.
    8. Nicolas Crouzet & Neil R. Mehrotra, 2020. "Small and Large Firms over the Business Cycle," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 110(11), pages 3549-3601, November.
    9. Marcin Kacperczyk & Philipp Schnabl, 2010. "When Safe Proved Risky: Commercial Paper during the Financial Crisis of 2007-2009," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 24(1), pages 29-50, Winter.
    10. Ran Duchin & Thomas Gilbert & Jarrad Harford & Christopher Hrdlicka, 2017. "Precautionary Savings with Risky Assets: When Cash Is Not Cash," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 72(2), pages 793-852, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Eskandari, Ruhollah & Zamanian, Morteza, 2022. "Cost of carry, financial constraints, and dynamics of corporate cash holdings," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).
    2. Priit Jeenas, 2023. "Firm balance sheet liquidity, monetary policy shocks, and investment dynamics," Economics Working Papers 1872, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
    3. Ryosuke Fujitani & Masazumi Hattori & Tomohide Mineyama, 2024. "Passive and Proactive Motivations of Cash Holdings," Working Papers e200, Tokyo Center for Economic Research.
    4. Bruno Albuquerque, 2024. "Corporate debt booms, financial constraints, and the investment nexus," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 39(5), pages 766-789, August.
    5. Robin Döttling & Tomislav Ladika & Enrico Perotti, 2016. "The (Self-)Funding of Intangibles," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 16-093/IV, Tinbergen Institute.
    6. Ruhollah Eskandari & Morteza Zamanian, 2023. "Heterogeneous responses to corporate marginal tax rates: Evidence from small and large firms," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 38(7), pages 1018-1047, November.
    7. Cooper Howes, 2019. "Financial Constraints, Sectoral Heterogeneity, and the Cyclicality of Investment," 2019 Meeting Papers 1581, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    8. Chen, Hsuan-Chi & Chou, Robin K. & Lu, Chien-Lin, 2018. "Saving for a rainy day: Evidence from the 2000 dot-com crash and the 2008 credit crisis," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 680-699.
    9. Cardella, Laura & Fairhurst, Douglas & Klasa, Sandy, 2021. "What determines the composition of a firm's cash reserves?," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 68(C).
    10. Abdulla, Yomna & Dang, Viet Anh & Khurshed, Arif, 2017. "Stock market listing and the use of trade credit: Evidence from public and private firms," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 391-410.
    11. John R Graham & Mark T Leary, 2018. "The Evolution of Corporate Cash," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 31(11), pages 4288-4344.
    12. Ippolito, Filippo & Ozdagli, Ali K. & Perez-Orive, Ander, 2018. "The transmission of monetary policy through bank lending: The floating rate channel," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(C), pages 49-71.
    13. Ahrends, Meike & Drobetz, Wolfgang & Puhan, Tatjana Xenia, 2018. "Cyclicality of growth opportunities and the value of cash holdings," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 74-96.
    14. He, Zhaozhao & Wintoki, M. Babajide, 2016. "The cost of innovation: R&D and high cash holdings in U.S. firms," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 280-303.
    15. Lars Norden & Stefan van Kampen, 2015. "The Dynamics of Trade Credit and Bank Debt in SME Finance: International Evidence," RBA Annual Conference Volume (Discontinued), in: Angus Moore & John Simon (ed.),Small Business Conditions and Finance, Reserve Bank of Australia.
    16. Hong, Liu & Liu, Shiang, 2023. "Geographic diversification and corporate cash holdings," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 381-409.
    17. Bianco, Timothy, 2021. "Monetary policy and credit flows," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 70(C).
    18. Julien Champagne & Émilien Gouin-Bonenfant, 2022. "Monetary Policy, Credit Constraints and SME Employment," Staff Working Papers 22-49, Bank of Canada.
    19. Park, SeHyun, 2022. "Liquid asset sheltering, or cost of capital? The effect of political corruption on corporate cash holdings," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 82(C).
    20. Ysmailov, Bektemir, 2021. "Interest rates, cash and short-term investments," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 132(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Cash management; liquid assets; short-term investment securities;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:cen:wpaper:25-02. 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: Dawn Anderson (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cesgvus.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.