現金流量對現金敏感度與融資限制關係之研究

Abstract

企業繼續生存與發展的重要競爭策略之一是不斷地追求成長，而公司的成長須靠有利的投資，又有利投資之進行必須仰賴內外部資金的支持，隨著市場上的競爭愈烈，單靠內部資本往往是緩不濟急，於是迫使企業必須仰賴外部資源的挹注有愈趨依賴的現象，因此，了解一家公司在外部市場是否有面臨融資限制的議題，將有其必要性與迫切性。 本文以Almeida et al. (2004)的論點為出發，驗證在台灣的投資環境裡，現金流量對現金的敏感度是否可作為區別有無融資限制的指標。本文使用國內上市資訊電子公司為對象，有效樣本共7,696筆來分析。依照股利支付率高低、所有權集中或分散、資產總額大小以及KZ指標高低等四種屬性，將公司區分成有融資限制與無融資限制二類，分別估計八條迴歸方程式，以觀察現金流量對現金的敏感度是否會因融資限制的問題而有所差異，並且在開始研究前，我們先預期實證結果為：在有融資限制的公司裡，其敏感度會顯著大於零，而在無融資限制者裡，其敏感度幾近於零，也就是二者沒有直接的變動關係。倘若實證結果可如預期，則將證明在台灣的投資市場裡，現金流量對現金的敏感度可作為區別有無融資限制的指標。 實證結果顯示，在所有權結構與資產總額的分類屬性下，有融資限制與無融資限制二者的敏感度獲得與預期相符的結果；然股利支付率與KZ指標的分類下，結果卻不如預期，但我們認為可能是這二項分類準則本身的不適性所造成。因此，本文的驗證結論是：現金流量對現金的敏感度仍可作為區別有無融資限制的參考指標。

Following the concept Almeida et al. (2004), this study verifies whether a firm’s sensitivity of cash flow to cash could be employed as an indicator to check the existence of financial constraints. The primitive point is that firms’ demands for liquidity are different for financial constraints and non-constraints companies. A constraint company usually has problems in financing from external market, thus it has the propensity to save cash for future usage. It has therefore a positive sensitivity of cash flow to cash. In contrast, a non-constraint company does not have the problems, so that its cash savings may not be systematically related to cash flows. Taiwan listed electronics corporations are used as the empirical samples. The samples are classified into two groups with four alternative approaches suggested by the literatures: Payout Policy, Ownership Structure, Asset Size, and KZ Index. Whether the sensitivity of cash flow to cash is actually different between the two groups are verified. The empirical results under the Ownership and Asset approaches show that constraint firms’ sensitivities of cash flow to cash are significantly positive, while non-constraint ones are indistinguishable. The results under the Payout and KZ Index approaches do not exactly support theoretical priors. The main reason might be that the classification is not appropriate. Conclusively, we support the concept of Almeida et al. (2004), and the effect of financial constraints could be affected by the sensitivity of cash flow to cash.