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 examines the role of political affiliation in the extension of trade credit by Chinese firms. Using a dataset of over 70,000 firms over the period 2000-2007, we find that, because they benefit from easier access to short-term external funding, politically affiliated firms can extend...

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...

We investigate the interaction between two terms of payment, supplier credit sales and customer advance payment. We find evidence that advance payments may signal customer creditworthiness and increase trade credit extension when we control for vendor size in international transactions or for...

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