Firms hold cash for precautionary reasons. The COVID-19 pandemic plausibly represents an exogenous shock for which firms hold cash. We examine the impact of cash holdings on corporate investment during the COVID-19 pandemic. We find that Capital Expenditure and M&A levels decrease by 37% and 71%...

We extend Tirole (2006) to link together two seemingly different cases – firms facing potential free cash flow problems versus firms facing financial constraints. The model predicts a large number of disparate findings in the empirical literature and so demonstrates its usefulness