Firms with more excess cash have higher capital expenditures, and spend more on acquisitions, even when they have poor investment opportunities. To investigate further the relation between excess cash and investment, we add
excess cash to traditional investment equations. Table 8 reports such investment equations for firms in our sample. We find that, after controlling for the determinants of investment, it is still the case that greater excess cash leads firms to invest more, whether they have good investment opportunities or not. At the same time, however, it appears that the impact of excess cash on investment is significantly smaller for positive excess cash than negative excess cash. In other
words, negative excess cash reduces investment more than positive excess cash increases investment. This relation could be viewed as evidence for credit
constraints of the type discussed in Fazzari, Hubbard and Petersen (1988).
Overall, the results suggest that the propensity to spend positive excess cash is
small. Table 8 also provides no evidence to support the view that it takes time
for excess cash to a!ect investment, since most of the e!ect seems to take place
within one year.