Cash Flow Shocks Research Articles

The Value-Momentum Correlation: An Investment Explanation

This paper shows that both value and momentum premia arise in a q-theoretic framework that considers optimal corporate policies under uncertain financing conditions. Book-to-market and past performance predict future returns because they serve as indicators of firm financing position. The book-to-market ratio increases with financing constraints, with high book-to-market firms investing less and demanding higher risk premia compared to unconstrained, low book-to-market firms. The value premium increases in bad times because value firms become even more constrained, while ample cash reserves allow growth firms to fare much better. Momentum effects appear among the most financially constrained firms. For these firms, financing constraints imply large price swings following cash-flow shocks and valuable equity market timing options imply positive autocorrelation in returns. Absent equity market timing during bad times, momentum disappears. The model is able to explain many empirical features of value and momentum premia, such as: (i) the procyclicality of the momentum premium, (ii) the countercyclicality of the value premium (iii) the negative correlation between the two, and (iv) severe losses to momentums strategies during market rebounds. Several new testable hypotheses arise regarding the fundamentals of value and momentum stocks. The empirical evidence is largely supportive.

What Moves Equity Markets? A Term Structure Decomposition for Stock Returns

Several papers decompose stock returns into cash flow and discount rate news to study equity market fluctuations. This paper develops an alternative return decomposition based on the fact that equity movements originate from variation in the present values of dividends with different maturities. I find that roughly 60% of equity volatility comes from the present value of dividends with maturities beyond 20 years and that cash flow shocks drive volatility in short-term present values whereas discount rate news are responsible for volatility in long-term present values. I also provide three further empirical applications of this new equity term structure decomposition.

Employment Protection, Investment, and Firm Growth

Abstract We exploit the adoption of U.S. state-level labor protection laws to study the effect of employment protection on corporate investment rates and sales growth. We find that, following the adoption of these laws, capital expenditures as a percentage of book assets decrease, resulting in slower sales growth. Our findings are consistent with theories predicting that greater employment protection discourages investment by making projects more irreversible. Supporting this channel, following negative cash flow shocks, firms are less likely to downsize operations in states that have adopted these laws but more likely to downsize in states that have not adopted these laws. Authors have furnished code, data, and an Internet Appendix, which are available on the Oxford University Press Web site next to the link to the final published paper online.

I Promise to Pay

Consumers are more likely to keep a repayment promise they make themselves. When a scheduling conflict prevents a borrower from attending a mortgage closing, a power of attorney (POA) empowers a third party to promise that the borrower will repay the loan. On a matched sample of POA and non-POA loans, and comparing within borrower and within property, I link POAs to greater delinquency and foreclosure. Although POAs are uncorrelated with cash flow shocks, they reflect reduced promise keeping when borrowers undergo financial distress. This association vanishes for originator-servicers’ loans, which suggests that financial intermediation plays a role in consumer lending.

Input Price Shocks and Investment: Evidence from OEMs

This paper studies changes in managers' investment decisions in response to short-term cash flow shocks. Using the novel setting of the 1999 Taiwan earthquake and a difference-in-differences design, I find managers reduce investment in research and development (R&D), but not capital expenditure, following the shock. The earthquake increased production costs for a subset of firms in the US high-technology industry that source raw materials from Taiwan. Because the shock occurred in Taiwan and was unexpected, this setting allows me to hold constant market demand and the investment-opportunity set, reducing concerns that changes in demand or investment opportunities could be driving the cutback in R&D. I also provide evidence suggesting the reduction in R&D is related to reduced innovation. Finally, using a decision tree model, I find evidence consistent with an earnings management motive. Specifically, I find firms affected by the shock become more aggressive in revenue recognition.

Mortgages, Cash-Flow Shocks and Local Employment

This paper quantifies the local impact of monetary policy through the cash-flow channel during the Crisis by combining novel micro datasets with near-universal coverage of UK mortgages and employment. I estimate that a reduction in mortgage payments equivalent to 1% of household income led to around a 5 percentage point increase in employment growth in non-tradable businesses the following year. But the spatial distribution of mortgage and labour market structures resulted in significant heterogeneity of this effect across the country. Taken at face value, the estimates suggest that the overall effect of accommodative monetary policy on total employment growth in 2010 varied by around 1.5 percentage points across regions.

Resurrecting the Size Effect: Firm Size, Profitability Shocks, and Expected Stock Returns

Many studies report that the size effect in the cross-section of stock returns disappeared after the early 1980s. This paper shows that its disappearance can be attributed to negative shocks to the profitability of small firms and positive shocks to big firms. After adjusting for the price impact of profitability shocks, we find a robust size effect in the cross-section of expected returns after the early 1980s. Our results highlight the importance of in-sample cash-flow shocks in understanding cross-sectional return predictability. Received April 2, 2014; editorial decision August 6, 2018 by Editor Laura Starks.

Composition of Cash Flow Shocks and Debt Financing

We investigate how debt financing responds to exposure to long-lived and temporary cash flow shocks. We identify these shocks using filtering methods that we demonstrate are highly effective for corporate finance data using Monte-Carlo simulations. The long-lived and temporary shocks we identify for our sample of US firms have distinct economic roots. Consistent with predictions from theoretical models, we find that firms with higher relative exposure to long-lived cash flow shocks maintain higher leverage. Firms also issue more debt following cash flow increases arising from long-lived as opposed to temporary shocks. This link between cash flow shocks and debt financing is economically large and long-lived. It is primarily driven by profitable firms and stronger among less financially constrained firms.

Financial frictions and the cash flow \u2013 external financing sensitivity: evidence from a panel of Pakistani firms

This paper uses a large panel of Pakistani non-financial firms over the period 2000–2013 to examine the role of financial constraints in establishing the relationship between cash flow and external financing. The results reveal that there exists a negative and significant relationship between external financing and cash flow. The finding of the substitutionary relation between internal funds availability and external financing has been viewed as evidence supporting the pecking order theory of capital structure. Yet, we show that this negative relationship is weak in case of financially constrained firms. We also analyze how credit multiplier affects external financing decisions of financially constrained and unconstrained firms. The results show that for financially unconstrained firms, the negative sensitively of external financing increases with asset tangibility. However, for financially constrained firms, the negative sensitivity of external financing to cash flow either decreases or turns positive as the tangibility of assets increases. This finding implies that financially constrained firms benefit more from investing in tangible assets because such assets not only help relax financial constraints but also having a potential to be a direct source of funds in periods of negative cash flow shocks.

Market Capitalization, Corporate Payouts, and Expected Returns

This paper examines the present value framework that links market capitalization to non-dividend cash flows (i.e., share repurchases and issuances) beyond the conventional price–dividend relationship. We show that total (dividend plus non-dividend) cash flows can account for a large fraction of both price and return variations by using tests of cross-equation restrictions on vector autoregression (VAR), impulse response functions, and variance decomposition of unexpected returns. These results come from the fact that total cash flow shocks exhibit a strong negative correlation with payout yield shocks. Non-dividend cash flows help to reconcile our findings with previous literature that prices move substantially relative to dividends.

Financial risk exposure of returns to education: Panel evidence from Korea*

The present study examined financial market risk exposure of human capital returns, which are represented by the returns to education, using panel data for Korea. Overall, financial market shocks seem to be irrelevant to returns to education. However, when we divide a financial market shock into cash flow news and discount rate news leading to a negative risk premium, returns to education increase after positive news about future cash flows and unexpected increases in discount rates Therefore, the risk exposure to cash flow shocks is offset by the exposure to discount rate shocks. The returns to education of low‐income workers were significantly exposed to the cash flow risk as compared to those with a high income, but they were offset by the positive correlation to discount rate shocks. In contrast, considering the gap between generations, the old generation was not only less exposed to the cash flow risk compared to the young generation regarding returns to education but also positively correlated with the discount rate shock, resulting in less exposure to financial market risks.

Investment and financial constraints in Indian firms: Does working capital smoothen fixed investment?

The purpose of this paper is twofold, first to examine the investment-cash flow sensitivity in fixed and working capital investments and second to determine the role played by working capital in smoothing fixed investment. The study is based on secondary financial data of 254 Indian manufacturing firms obtained from CAPITALINE database, pertaining to a period of 10 years. This study employs two-step AB difference GMM estimator proposed by Arellano and Bond (Rev Econ Stud 58(2):277–297, 1991) to arrive at results. Results of the study confirm that working capital investment is excessively sensitive to cash flow shocks. Further we found that both fixed and working capital investment in constrained firms are more sensitive to cash flow shocks when compared to unconstrained firm. Furthermore, the fixed investment smoothing is higher in case of constrained firms. The study is a pioneer in testing whether fixed and working capital investments are sensitive to cash flow shocks and how investment-cash flow sensitivity changes with financial constraints of Indian firms. In addition, this study tends to examine the role of working capital in smoothing the fixed investment. Furthermore, this study explains this phenomenon in more detail by focusing on investment smoothing across constrained and unconstrained firms.

The Marginal Propensity to Hire

This paper studies the link between firm-level financial constraints and employment decisions, as well as the implications for the propagation of aggregate shocks. I exploit the idea that, when the financial constraint binds, a firm adjusts its employment in response to cash flow shocks. I identify such shocks from changes to business rates, a U.K. tax based on a periodically estimated value of the property occupied by the firm. A 2010 revaluation implied that similar firms, occupying similar properties in narrowly defined geographical locations, experienced different tax changes, allowing me to control for confounding shocks to local demand. I find that, on average, for every £1 of additional cash flow, 39 pence are spent on employment. I label this response the marginal propensity to hire (MPH). I then calibrate a firm dynamics model with financial frictions toward this empirical evidence. As in the data, small and leveraged firms in the model have a greater MPH. Simulating a tightening of credit conditions, I find that the model can account for much of the decline in U.K. aggregate output and employment observed in the wake of the financial crisis.

The influence of capital expenditures on working capital management in the corporate sector of an emerging economy: the role of financing constraints

Relying on firm-level panel data from an emerging economy, this study explores the impact of fixed capital expenditure on working capital management practices. When facing insufficient internally generated cash flows and external funds for accommodating capital investments, companies are found to finance capital expenditure by primarily depleting cash reserves and increasing trade payables. Corroborating the postulates of the financing constraints theory, working capital investments are found to be inversely related to the degree of financing constraints, and positively sensitive to operating cash flow fluctuations and availability of external finance. For financially constrained companies, capital expenditures are found to more likely exercise a negative impact on working capital investments. Contributing to the discussion on the nature of business cycles, we document that the negative cash flow shocks are likely to be transmitted to firms’ counterparties through the trade credit channel rather than through the reduction of investment demand. The empirical findings also suggest that financial managers fail to properly account for capital expenditures in short-term liquidity planning, which, under conditions of limited access to imperfect capital markets, may induce the recurrence of costly working capital adjustments.

Management of Reported and Forecast EPS, Investor Responses, and Research Implications

We document substantial management of reported and forecast earnings per share (EPS) for analyst-followed U.S. firms, with the extent of management increasing with share price. Managers smooth the volatility of reported EPS by using accruals to offset cash flow shocks. Smoother EPS is easier to forecast, resulting in smaller forecast errors. Managers also differentially guide forecasts to improve accuracy. Whereas unmanaged forecast errors are much larger for high-price firms, they are compressed to the point their magnitudes resemble those for low-price firms. Managers also guide analyst forecasts to generate patterns of forecast walkdowns that again vary with share price. Given the remarkable level of management implied by our results, we conduct additional robustness analyses. The strongest evidence is observed in stock price responses: investors recognize efforts to manage reported and forecast EPS and adjust accordingly. We highlight potential biases caused by researchers being unaware of managerial efforts and investor responses, and offer ways to mitigate those biases. The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2017.2832 . This paper was accepted by Shivaram Rajgopal, accounting.

No-Sign Consumer Contracting

Consumers are more likely to keep a repayment promise they make themselves. When a scheduling conflict prevents a borrower from attending a mortgage closing, a Power of Attorney (POA) empowers a third party to promise that the borrower will repay the loan. On a matched sample of POA and non-POA loans, and comparing within-borrower and within-property, I link POAs to greater delinquency and foreclosure. POAs are uncorrelated with cash flow shocks but reflect reduced promise-keeping upon undergoing financial distress. This association vanishes for originator-servicer loans, suggesting financial intermediation plays a role in consumer lending.

The Effect of Cash Injections: Evidence from the 1980s Farm Debt Crisis

What is the effect of cash injections during financial crises? Exploiting county-level variation arising from random weather shocks during the 1980s Farm Debt Crisis, we analyze and measure the effect of local cash flow shocks on the real and financial sector. We show that such cash flow shocks have significant impact on a host of economic outcomes, including land values, loan delinquency rates, the probability of bank failure, employment, and wages. Estimates of the effect of local cash flow shocks on county income levels during the financial crisis yield a multiplier of 1.63.

Stakeholder Conflicts and Cash Flow Shocks: Evidence from Changes in ERISA Pension Funding Rules

ABSTRACTIn 2012, Congress passed Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century (MAP-21), which changed the ERISA pension funding rules such that mandatory pension contributions decreased. Advocates for the bill argued that reducing mandatory contributions would increase firms' investment. In contrast, I do not find an average increase in investment among the firms benefiting from MAP-21. Rather, I find that firms either hold pension funding relief on their balance sheets as liquid assets or pay out pension funding relief to shareholders. To the extent that managers increase investment in response to MAP-21, it is concentrated in firms with weak governance or ineffective internal controls.

Cash Holdings and Labor Heterogeneity: The Role of Skilled Labor

Firms differ in their dependence on skilled labor, and face labor adjustment costs that increase with their workers’ skill level. We show that firms with a higher share of skilled workers, and thus less flexibility to adjust their labor demand in response to cash flow shocks, hold more precautionary cash. The effect of labor skills on cash holdings is more pronounced for financially constrained firms and varies with exogenous differences in firing and hiring costs. We address endogeneity concerns by using subsamples of firms with reasonably similar characteristics, propensity score matching, and a quasi-experimental shock to labor markets.

Global Portfolio Diversification for Long-Horizon Investors

This paper conducts a theoretical and empirical investigation of global portfolio diversification for long-horizon investors in the presence of permanent cash flow shocks and transitory discount rate shocks to asset prices and returns. An increase in the cross-country correlations of cash flow shocks raises the risk of a globally diversified portfolio at all horizons. By contrast, an increase in the cross-country correlations of discount rate shocks has a muted effect on portfolio risk at long horizons and does not diminish the benefits of global portfolio diversification to long-term investors. Empirically, we find that increased correlations of discount rate shocks resulting from financial globalization appear to be the main driver of an estimated secular increase in the cross-country correlations of both stock and bond returns since the late 1990’s. Increased correlations of inflation shocks are also an important source of the shift in bond correlations. By contrast, we don’t find evidence of an increase in the cross-country correlations of equity cash flow news or stock market volatility shocks. Our findings imply that the benefits of global equity diversification have not declined for long horizon investors despite the secular increase in global stock correlations, while the benefits of global bond diversification have declined.