Foreign residency rights and corporate cash holdings

Based on the privately owned enterprises in China's A-share stock market from 2007 to 2017, we investigate the relation between foreign residency rights and corporate cash holdings. The empirical results show that privately owned enterprises whose controlling persons have foreign residency rights may hold more cash. Our conclusions are robust when considering the endogeneity concerns, alternative measures of cash holdings and foreign residency rights, additional control variables, the effect of financial crisis. In further analyses part, we discuss the effect of extradition agreements, residency countries' institutional environment, law enforcement efficiency in China, political connections, verifying that the positive relation remains when: (a) controlling persons obtain foreign residency rights from countries that have no extradition agreements with China, (b) residency countries have weak institutional environment, (c) privately owned enterprises are in regions with better law enforcement efficiency, (d) privately owned enterprises have no political connections. Moreover, we explain the reason that why privately owned enterprises with foreign residency rights hold more cash from the perspective of precautionary motive, transaction motive, speculative motive, corporate governance. At last, we find that foreign residency rights are negatively associated with the market value of cash holdings.