Abstract: Enterprises’ cash holdings are often closely related to the adjustment of capital structure. Taking the listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets during the time period of 2005-2014 as the research samples, this paper adopts the dynamic panel threshold regression model to empirically study the impact of cash holdings and financing constraints on the nonlinear adjustment of capital structure. The results show that the higher level of cash holdings a company has, the faster the speed of the capital structure adjustment will be, and the greater the absolute degree of deviation of the capital structure from the target capital structure will be. These relationships are significantly different under different levels of debts: when the debt is excessive, the level of cash holdings is positively correlated with the speed of capital structure adjustment and is negatively correlated with the degree of the capital structure deviation; when the debt is insufficient, the level of cash holdings is negatively correlated with the speed of capital structure adjustment and is positively correlated with the degree of capital structure deviation. Further researches find out that the impact of the level of cash holding on the nonlinear adjustment of capital structure will vary with the degree of financing constraints; however, the positive and negative relationships between them are not affected by the degrees of financing constraints.

Key words: cash holdings level; degree of financial constraints; nonlinear adjustment of capital structure; dynamic panel threshold regression model