Despite the importance of trade credit as a source of financing there is a significant and persistent decline in this form of short-term borrowing and lending over the 1979 to 2018 interval. We find that the median firm's accounts receivable ratio decreased by 52 percent while accounts payable...

We compare the timeliness of the information signals produced by investor-paid credit rating agencies (Egan and Jones), issuer-paid credit rating agencies (Standard and Poor's), and by sell-side equity analysts, and study the predictive power of this information for the bond and equity markets...

We document a negative causal relationship between changes in the analyst coverage of buying firms and their use of trade credit, thus establishing an "information production" hypothesis of trade credit usage. We show that firms use trade credit to a greater extent when the extent of asymmetric...

We examine the impact of policy uncertainty on trade credit. We document a decline (increase) in accounts payable and receivable during periods of high (low) policy uncertainty. The relation is robust and holds after controlling for endogeneity, economic and political uncertainties, and the...

We examine the impact of employee-related Corporate Social Responsibility (ER-CSR) on pay disparity between top management and the average worker. Firms with higher ER-CSR ratings have a lower disparity and the effect is greatest when executives are paid the most. ER-CSR is associated with a...

We document a novel channel of monetary policy transmission based on credit rating thresholds. Focusing on non-financial U.S. firms between 1990-2007, we find that firms near a rating downgrade are relatively more sensitive to monetary shocks than firms in the middle of the rating distribution....