Trade Credit (trade + credit)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


The Implications of Trade Credit for Bank Monitoring: Suggestive Evidence from Japan

JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS & MANAGEMENT STRATEGY, Issue 2 2008
Yoshiro Miwa
Firms in modern developed economies borrow from both banks and trade partners. Using Japanese manufacturing data from the 1960s, we estimate the price of trade credit, and explore some of the ways firms choose between the credit and bank loans. We find that firms of all sizes borrow heavily from their trade partners, and at implicit rates that track the explicit rates banks would charge. They borrow from banks when they anticipate needing money for relatively long periods; they turn to trade partners when they face short-term unexpected exigencies. This apparent contrast in the term structures follows, we suggest, from the fundamentally different way bankers and trade partners cut default risk. Because bankers seldom know their borrowers' industries first hand, they rely on formal legal protection (like security interests). Because trade partners know the industry well, they reduce risk by monitoring their borrowers closely instead. Because the costs to creating legal mechanisms are heavily front-loaded, bankers focus on long-term debt; because the costs of monitoring debtors are ongoing, trade creditors do not. Apparently, banks monitor less than we have thought. [source]


Trade Credit Terms Offered by Small Firms: Survey Evidence and Empirical Analysis

JOURNAL OF BUSINESS FINANCE & ACCOUNTING, Issue 3-4 2002
Nicholas Wilson
Trade credit has been shown to be an important source of short-term finance for smaller firms but small firms are also suppliers of trade credit. There is little empirical evidence on the credit granting decisions of small firms. Previous empirical work (Petersen and Rajan, 1997; and Ng, Smith and Smith, 1999) has focused on credit granting and investment in accounts receivable in larger firms. In this paper we look at the influences on credit granting for the smallest firms, using a sample of firms with an average of 10 employees. As in previous studies we find that product and demand characteristics influence credit terms. Moreover, we find evidence that firm size affects credit extension choices directly by setting limits on the possibilities for economies of scale, but it also impacts indirectly by affecting the firm's access to finance and its bargaining strength vis-à-vis suppliers. The dominant position of larger customers in bargaining with small suppliers constrains the impact of other factors on the firm's choice of credit terms. Small firms are also under pressure to conform to industry norms, although lack of resources can be a limiting factor. Constrained firms may make use of two-part terms in an attempt to improve their cashflow. [source]


Trade credit and customer relationships

MANAGERIAL AND DECISION ECONOMICS, Issue 6-7 2003
Barbara Summers
Trade credit is an important economic phenomenon, and a variety of theories have been put forward to explain the decisions firms make on credit extension. The ways in which credit can be used as a strategic tool to support corporate objectives has not, however, been fully discussed. The results presented here provide some support for the extant theory on trade credit extension and for recent empirical papers in this area (e.g. Ng et al., 1999; Petersen and Rajan, 1994). However, our results suggest that trade credit granting has a set of subtle and complex motivations over and above those predicted by standard theory. In particular trade credit extension can be used as a many-faceted marketing/relationship management tool and/or as a means of signalling information to the market or to specific buyers about the firm, its products and its future prospects/commitment. Much of credit extension can be seen as customer focused; for example, encouraging frequent purchasers which offer the potential for relationship development or accommodating customers' demand for credit to help finance their production period. The requirements/bargaining power of large customers can influence a firm to extend more credit. Firms will vary terms in anticipation of capturing new business, to attract specific customers and in order to achieve specific marketing aims. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


Does Trade Credit Substitute Bank Credit?

ECONOMIC NOTES, Issue 1 2005
Evidence from Firm-level Data
The paper examines micro data on Italian manufacturing firms' inventory behaviour to test the Meltzer (1960) hypothesis according to which firms substitute bank credit with trade credit (TC) during money tightening. We find that inventory investment of Italian manufacturing firms is constrained by their availability of TC and that this effect more than doubles during monetary restrictions. As for the magnitude of the substitution effect, however, we find that it is not sizeable. This is in line with the micro theories of TC and the evidence on actual firm practices, according to which credit terms display modest variations over time. [source]


Optimal manufacturer's pricing and lot-sizing policies under trade credit financing

INTERNATIONAL TRANSACTIONS IN OPERATIONAL RESEARCH, Issue 6 2006
Jinn-Tsair Teng
Abstract In this paper, we extend Goyal's economic order quantity (EOQ) model to allow for the following four important facts: (1) the manufacturer's selling price per unit is necessarily higher than its unit cost, (2) the interest rate charged by a bank is not necessarily higher than the manufacturer's investment return rate, (3) the demand rate is a downward-sloping function of the price, and (4) an economic production quantity (EPQ) model is a generalized EOQ model. We then establish an appropriate EPQ model accordingly, in which the manufacturer receives the supplier trade credit and provides the customer trade credit simultaneously. As a result, the proposed model is in a general framework that includes numerous previous models as special cases. Furthermore, we provide an easy-to-use closed-form optimal solution to the problem for any given price. Finally, we develop an algorithm for the manufacturer to determine its optimal price and lot size simultaneously. [source]


On the Determinants and Dynamics of Trade Credit Use: Empirical Evidence from Business Start-ups

JOURNAL OF BUSINESS FINANCE & ACCOUNTING, Issue 1-2 2006
Nancy Huyghebaert
Abstract: Business start-ups provide an excellent opportunity for testing various hypotheses on why firms use trade credit. At the time of start-up, failure risk and financial constraints are typically large. Also, start-ups have no established relationships with banks and suppliers. The literature has related all these features to trade credit use. Moreover, as firms grow older, these characteristics become less pronounced, allowing us to test the dynamics of trade credit use. We find that start-ups use more trade credit when financial constraints are large, when suppliers have a financing advantage over banks in financing high-risk firms, when entrepreneurs value private benefits of control and when transaction costs are important. Furthermore, the dynamic implications of these theories are supported. [source]


Trade Credit Terms Offered by Small Firms: Survey Evidence and Empirical Analysis

JOURNAL OF BUSINESS FINANCE & ACCOUNTING, Issue 3-4 2002
Nicholas Wilson
Trade credit has been shown to be an important source of short-term finance for smaller firms but small firms are also suppliers of trade credit. There is little empirical evidence on the credit granting decisions of small firms. Previous empirical work (Petersen and Rajan, 1997; and Ng, Smith and Smith, 1999) has focused on credit granting and investment in accounts receivable in larger firms. In this paper we look at the influences on credit granting for the smallest firms, using a sample of firms with an average of 10 employees. As in previous studies we find that product and demand characteristics influence credit terms. Moreover, we find evidence that firm size affects credit extension choices directly by setting limits on the possibilities for economies of scale, but it also impacts indirectly by affecting the firm's access to finance and its bargaining strength vis-à-vis suppliers. The dominant position of larger customers in bargaining with small suppliers constrains the impact of other factors on the firm's choice of credit terms. Small firms are also under pressure to conform to industry norms, although lack of resources can be a limiting factor. Constrained firms may make use of two-part terms in an attempt to improve their cashflow. [source]


The Implications of Trade Credit for Bank Monitoring: Suggestive Evidence from Japan

JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS & MANAGEMENT STRATEGY, Issue 2 2008
Yoshiro Miwa
Firms in modern developed economies borrow from both banks and trade partners. Using Japanese manufacturing data from the 1960s, we estimate the price of trade credit, and explore some of the ways firms choose between the credit and bank loans. We find that firms of all sizes borrow heavily from their trade partners, and at implicit rates that track the explicit rates banks would charge. They borrow from banks when they anticipate needing money for relatively long periods; they turn to trade partners when they face short-term unexpected exigencies. This apparent contrast in the term structures follows, we suggest, from the fundamentally different way bankers and trade partners cut default risk. Because bankers seldom know their borrowers' industries first hand, they rely on formal legal protection (like security interests). Because trade partners know the industry well, they reduce risk by monitoring their borrowers closely instead. Because the costs to creating legal mechanisms are heavily front-loaded, bankers focus on long-term debt; because the costs of monitoring debtors are ongoing, trade creditors do not. Apparently, banks monitor less than we have thought. [source]


The trade credit decision: evidence of UK firms

MANAGERIAL AND DECISION ECONOMICS, Issue 6-7 2003
Nam Sang Cheng
Trade credit finance and credit management are gradually gaining the research attention an area of such importance merits. One area, still far from resolved, is why trade credit is extended by non-financial firms to customers. This paper seeks to identify the generic forces behind the trade credit offer and to explore the empirical support for 20 propositions on credit motives derived from the literature and the implications of such motives to credit policies. The paper reports findings from a survey of senior finance officers involved in credit management in large UK companies. It assesses the degree to which theoretical explanations for granting trade credit are experienced in practice and whether observed differences attaching to credit motives among firms are associated with variations in credit policies and debtor days. The study found strong empirical support for seven propositions linked to competitiveness, pricing, investment and financing, and weaker support for a number of other theoretically-derived motives for trade credit extension. Factor analysis suggested a more insightful approach to classifying trade credit motives, covering investment in customers, customer's operating and financial benefits, supplier's marketing/operational benefits and market pressure to conform. In addition, two factors,customer relations and pricing flexibility,were extracted as motives for varying credit terms. Consistent with our hypothesis average debtor days were found to be significantly higher for those firms emphasising the financing, investment, and pricing flexibility propositions. These findings, and implications for future research, are explored. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


The product differentiation hypothesis for corporate trade credit

MANAGERIAL AND DECISION ECONOMICS, Issue 6-7 2003
George W. Blazenko
The product differentiation hypothesis for trade credit says that business managers use trade credit like advertising to differentiate their products. Prior studies of this hypothesis conclude that higher profit margins induce firms to increase trade credit and vice versa. We better represent the relation between the cost of bad debts and the price of the product offered on credit. When prices are higher, firms suffer greater losses from non-payment. Our model shows that, contrary to early versions of the product differentiation hypothesis, when managers adjust trade credit and profit margins for a perturbation in marginal cost, optimal profit margin and trade credit may move in opposite directions. A manager maintains revenue for price elastic demand by moderating the price increase, which decreases profit margin. At the same time, the manager also increases trade credit, which serves to maintain revenue by encouraging product demand. We report evidence of a negative relation between corporate receivables and profit margin. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


Bank and Nonbank Financial Intermediation

THE JOURNAL OF FINANCE, Issue 6 2004
PHILIP BOND
ABSTRACT Conglomerates, trade credit arrangements, and banks are all instances of financial intermediation. However, these institutions differ significantly in the extent to which the projects financed absorb aggregate intermediary risk, in whether or not intermediation is carried out by a financial specialist, in the type of projects they fund and in the type of claims they issue to investors. The paper develops a simple unified model that both accounts for the continued coexistence of these different forms of intermediation, and explains why they differ. Specific applications to conglomerate firms, trade credit, and banking are discussed. [source]