Product Market Threats, Payouts, and Financial Flexibility

Gerard Hoberg, Gordon Phillips and Nagpurnanand Prabhala

Journal of Finance, 2014, vol. 69, issue 1, 293-324

Abstract: type="main">

We examine how product market threats influence firm payout policy and cash holdings. Using firms' product text descriptions, we develop new measures of competitive threats. Our primary measure, product market fluidity, captures changes in rival firms' products relative to the firm's products. We show that fluidity decreases firm propensity to make payouts via dividends or repurchases and increases the cash held by firms, especially for firms with less access to financial markets. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that firms' financial policies are significantly shaped by product market threats and dynamics.

Date: 2014
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (303)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/jofi.12050 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:jfinan:v:69:y:2014:i:1:p:293-324

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.afajof.org/membership/join.asp

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Finance from American Finance Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().