Investor protection and cash holdings: Evidence from US cross-listing

Ying Huang, Susan Elkinawy and Pankaj Jain

Journal of Banking & Finance, 2013, vol. 37, issue 3, 937-951

Abstract: This paper examines (i) whether the level of firms’ cash holdings differ depending on the strength of investor protection, (ii) whether excess cash holdings are valued more with better investor protection, and (iii) whether cross-listed firms that improve investor protection through “bonding” hold relatively more cash than non-cross-listed firms. We analyze 1405 ADR firms and their corresponding matched firms from 39 different countries and document that ADR firms have significantly higher cash holdings relative to their non-cross-listed peers, especially in recent years. The increase in cash holdings is much higher for emerging market firms because of their transition from particularly poor home country investor protection and accounting standards before cross-listing to much higher standards after cross-listing. In addition, firms with level III ADR listing, which represents the strongest investor protection, have higher cash holdings relative to other types of ADR firms.

Keywords: Cross-listing; Cash holdings; Bonding hypothesis; Investor protection; Agency costs (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G15 G32 G34 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (38)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378426612003329
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:jbfina:v:37:y:2013:i:3:p:937-951

DOI: 10.1016/j.jbankfin.2012.10.021

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Banking & Finance is currently edited by Ike Mathur

More articles in Journal of Banking & Finance from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().