Title: Does stock liquidity matter for firm investment in emerging markets? Evidence from South Africa

Authors: Tusiime Ivan Mugarura; Toliva Solomon Iwutung

Addresses: Institute for Financial and Accounting Studies, Xiamen University, Xiamen, China ' Wang Yanan Institute for Studies in Economics, Xiamen University, Xiamen, China

Abstract: This paper investigates the relationship between firm investment and stock liquidity using panel data of 250 firms listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange for the period 1997-2016. We use both the portfolio sorting approach and Fama-Macbeth methodology. The main findings show that there is no significant relationship between firm investment and liquidity. We also find no evidence of significant relationship in the cross-section analysis. We however document a significant positive relationship for small size firms indicating that liquidity improves for financially constrained firms. Our robustness check proves that the insignificant relationship between firm investment and liquidity is not affected by economic disasters.

Keywords: stock liquidity; firm investment; financial constraints; emerging markets.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBEM.2019.102653

International Journal of Business and Emerging Markets, 2019 Vol.11 No.3, pp.274 - 287

Received: 15 Mar 2019
Accepted: 17 Jun 2019
Published online: 30 Sep 2019 *

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