Investment, Financing Constraints, and Internal Capital Markets: Evidence from the Advertising Expenditures of Multinational Firms
Posted: 1 Jun 2009
Date Written: June 2009
Abstract
We find a significant positive relation between a firm's advertising spending in the United States and its contemporaneous foreign cash flow. This relation holds even after controlling for factors that should be related to the optimal level of domestic advertising, and it is stronger for subsets of firms that we expect to be relatively more financially constrained. Our evidence supports the hypothesis that there is a causal and economically substantial link between cash flow and investment spending, even for intangible investments such as advertising. Our evidence also suggests that firms have active internal capital markets in which capital is moved across geographic regions.
Keywords: G31, G32, D92, G23, M37
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation