We examine the impact on firm cash holdings of uncertainty of uncertainty, measured as the ex post volatility of economic policy uncertainty. Using the news-based index developed by Baker et al. (2016) for twenty-two countries, we find that, when there is greater volatility of economic uncertainty, firms hold more cash. Our results are robust to controlling for a host of firm-level and country-level factors. Consistent with Baker et al. (2016), we consider that less economic policy uncertainty is associated with more investment; and so the real-option value of cash is sensitive to the possibility of a future desirability of investment. Therefore, when there is greater expected volatility of uncertainty, measured under rational expectations as the recent ex post volatility of uncertainty, firms will hold more cash. We also find that the volatility of economic policy uncertainty is much more economically significant in determining firm cash holdings than economic policy uncertainty itself. Therefore, our paper not only adds to the literature on uncertainty and cash holdings, but also, importantly, to the limited literature in finance on the impact of uncertainty of uncertainty.

我们研究了不确定性的不确定性对公司现金持有量的影响，以经济政策不确定性的事后波动性来衡量。使用 Baker 等人开发的基于新闻的索引。(2016) 对于 22 个国家，我们发现，当经济不确定性波动较大时，企业持有更多现金。我们的结果对于控制许多公司层面和国家层面的因素是稳健的。与贝克等人一致。(2016)，我们认为经济政策不确定性越小，投资越多；因此现金的实物期权价值对未来投资意愿的可能性很敏感。因此，当存在较大的预期不确定性波动时，在理性预期下衡量为近期不确定性的事后波动性时，企业将持有更多现金。我们还发现，与经济政策不确定性本身相比，经济政策不确定性的波动在确定公司现金持有量方面具有更大的经济意义。因此，我们的论文不仅增加了关于不确定性和现金持有量的文献，而且重要的是，增加了金融领域关于不确定性的不确定性影响的有限文献。