기업 현금 보유 행위의 예비적 동기 및 보험 효과에 관한 이론 및 실증적 증거

Cash is an insurance. An individual or a company’ s cash holding behavior is essentially similar to hedging or protecting a risk through insurance. Economic agents would hold cash to prepare for future contingency. This is called cash holding by precautionary motive and cash holding is virtually the same as money demand. Future contingency is a situation where cash procurement or spending must occur. For example, macro systematic credit crunch and individual liquidity crisis, etc. Cash is used for this purpose because only cash is the only means of exchange and payment for all transactions. Moreover, cash is a mean of store of value. This study provides the theoretical and empirical analysis of the precautionary motive oriented cash hoarding or cash balance of firms, which aims at an insurance effect. The theoretical model presented in this study considers Cobb-Douglas production function which factors are two kinds of liquid capital (cash) and fixed capital. The cost of the latter with high production contribution is set as a random variable that can be realized stochastically as high or low. The risk that the firm with the production structure would face is the very high level fixed capital cost. Based on the theoretical model, the optimal employed cash should be different for firms depending on whether firm keeps precautionary policy for the high level cost of fixed capital or not. We show that the precautionary policy firms optimally hold more cash reserves than firms without the policy. The results of the empirical analysis with sample of KOSPI and KOSDAQ listed firms in KRX are as follows: First, in panel data model analysis, the ratio of cashable asset to total assets turns out to positively affect Tobin’ s Q which is statistically significant. This is robust to sample periods and the same directional results can be also obtained in the yearly cross section analysis. Second, cash would have played a role in differentiated impulse of the 2008 global financial crisis. The proportion of cashable assets can be used as a continuous treatment variable. As a result, Tobin’ s Q increased as the cashable assets portion is so higher that it was less exposed to the impact of the global financial crisis.