We model the firm's optimal choice of capital and goodness subject to financial constraints. Managers and shareholders derive benefits over profits and social responsibility. Goodness is costly and its marginal benefit is finite; as a result, less-constrained firms spend more on goodness. We...

An influential thesis, dubbed "Doing Well by Doing Good", argues that corporate social responsibility is profitable. We establish that, if anything, the reverse is true: firms do good only when they do well in the sense of having financial slack. We model a firm's optimal choices of capital and...

Using data on exogenous liquidity losses generated by the fraud and failure of a cash-intransit firm, we demonstrate a causal impact on firms' trade credit usage. We find that firms manage liquidity shortfalls by increasing the amount of drawn credit from suppliers and decreasing the amount...

In contrast to common literature that suggests that trade credit is an extremely expensive source of financing with annual interest rates exceeding 40 percent, this paper argues that the average interest rate of trade credit does not exceed the cost of alternative funds, with estimated average...

The extant literature on trade credit emphasizes its financing role wherein financially sound firms provide trade credit to ease the credit constraints of weaker trading partners. We offer an alternative, though not mutually exclusive, perspective in which trade credit serves as a commitment...

The extant literature on trade credit emphasizes its financing role wherein financially sound firms provide trade credit to ease the credit constraints of weaker trading partners. We offer an alternative, though not mutually exclusive, perspective in which trade credit serves as a commitment...