Do Relationships Have Limits? Banking Relationships, Financial Constraints, and Investment

Using detailed information on the debt structure of 250 publicly traded U.S. firms over the 1980-93 period, we find that the sensitivity of investment to internally generated funds increases with a firm's reliance on bank financing. Bank-dependent firms also hold larger stocks of liquid assets and have lower dividend payout rates. However, the greater cash sensitivity of investment for bank-dependent firms arises only for the largest capital expenditures (relative to assets). For most levels of investment spending, bank-dependent firms appear to be slightly less cash-flow-constrained than firms with access to public debt markets.