This article quantifies a new motive of holding cash through the channel of financing risk. We show that if access to future credit is risky, firms may issue long-term debt now and save funds in cash to secure the current credit capacity for the future. We structurally estimate the model and find that this motive explains approximately 24% to 30% of cash holdings in the data. Counterfactual experiments indicate that the value of holding cash is approximately 8% of shareholder value.
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