Economic policy uncertainty under the conditions of sanctions: Impact on the Russian companies’ cash holdings

Goal: to analyze the impact of economic policy uncertainty on cash holdings of Russian manufacturing companies and the factors that moderate this impact, taking into account sanctions restrictions. Methodology: during the study, regression models were evaluated based on data from more than 1 400 Russian manufacturing companies for the period 2014–2020, using the least square method on the transformed data (within estimators). Findings: it was found that the uncertainty of economic policy leads to an increase in cash holdings, which means a decrease in the level of investment in the development of the company and payments to owners, while this effect is stronger for companies subject to sanctions and companies without state participation, while large companies are less sensitive to policy uncertainty than medium-sized enterprises. Originality and contribution of the authors: the study for the first time examined the impact of economic policy uncertainty on cash holdings of Russian companies, taking into account the imposed sanctions.