We use a panel of 9381 UK firms to study the links between firms’ global engagement status and their financial health. We estimate inventory investment equations augmented with a financial composition variable, and interpret the sensitivity of inventory investment to the latter as a measure of...

In this paper, we use a panel of 609 UK firms over the period 1980-2000 to test for the existence of a trade credit channel of transmission of monetary policy, and for whether this channel plays an offsetting effect on the traditional credit channel. We estimate error-correction inventory...

The relationship between the production process and short-term credit is well established in the literature. Here we argue that the stage of fabrication of inventories can affect the incentives to offer and take up trade credit, an important source of short-term credit for businesses. Using a...

There are some surprising parallels between the 1997-8 Asian crisis and the recent financial crisis that provide lessons for policymakers. This paper provides a theoretical model of an open economy credit channel including currency mismatch and financial fragility where exporting firms have...

Trade credit is an important source of finance for firms and has been well researched, but the focus has been on financial trade-offs. In this paper, we consider the trade-offs with inventories and develop a simple model that recognizes the incentives a firm faces to offer and receive trade...

We investigate the empirical linkages between sales uncertainty and firms’ inventory investment behavior while controlling for firms’ financial strength. Using large panels of manufacturing firms from several European countries we find that higher sales uncertainty leads to larger stocks of...

Our paper focuses on testing the advantages in controlling the buyer and salvaging goods supplied where we have information on the nature of the transacted good and information on the inventory of buyers and sellers. We find transactions in specialized goods tend to be conducted more often using...

This paper provides the first detailed empirical study on the use of prepayments by firms. Our results based on large panels of French firms support the Daripa and Nilsen (2011) production subsidy theory of prepayment, according to which customers prepay their suppliers when these would...

This paper investigates the role of trade credit in the transmission of monetary policy. Most models of the transmission mechanism allow firms to access only financial markets or bank lending according to some net worth criterion. In our model we consider external finance from trade credit as an...

This paper uses a panel of 24184 UK firms over the period 1993-2003 to study the extent to which the sensitivity of investment to cash flow differs at firms facing different levels of internal and external financial constraints. Our results suggest that when the sample is split on the basis of...