Abstract: Executive academic experience is a unique phenomenon with the development of Chinese economy, which is an important and special experience for executives, and then will executive academic experience influence the financing preference and cash holdings of listed companies? Will it affect the performance of the company? Based on the sample of Chinese listed companies from year 2006 to 2017, this paper studies the influence of executives' academic experience on financing preference, cash holdings and corporate performance. The results show that:executives' academic experience reduces the company's debt ratio and bank loan ratio, reduces the company's interest expense ratio and debt cost ratio, improves the company's cash holding level, and improves the company's performance. In the further study, the paper finds that the impact of executive academic experience on financing preference, cash holdings and corporate performance is more obvious in non-state-owned enterprises.

Key words: academic experience, financing preference, debt cost, performance, state-owned enterprise