It is typically less profitable for an opportunistic borrower to divert inputs than to divert cash. Suppliers, therefore, may lend more liberally than banks. This simple argument is at the core of our contract theoretic model of trade credit in competitive markets. The model implies that trade...

We study the role of trade credit in enhancing the resilience of financially constrained firms from 2010 to 2017. Implicit borrowing in trade finance allows financially constrained firms to bridge the financing gap, expand employment by 8.26 per cent, and increase average firm profits...

We study 52 million trade credit contracts, issued by 51 suppliers over 9 years to about 199,000 unique customers. The data contain information on contract size, due dates, actual time to payment, and firm characteristics. Our empirical analysis contradicts the conventional view that trade...

We examine a novel but economically important characterization of trade credit relationships in which large investment-grade buyers borrow from their substantially smaller, often credit- constrained, suppliers. Using variation in large retailers' aggregate cash management policies as a shock to...

In the first detailed study of the trade debt own cost for the Italian manufacturing firms it is shown that, comparing also self-defined bank lending rationed and non rationed firms, interfirm credit received is, if ever, only slightly more expensive than bank credit. Besides establishing the...

Interfirm late payments are a hot issue in the EU, as witnessed by the 1998 bills passed in Italy and in the U.K. and by the soon to be approved EU Directive. Comprehensive information, especially on the effective own cost, is however almost absent in the literature. The paper provides the first...

Italian firms are top users of trade credit in an international comparison. The paper offers some clues to the determinants of this stylised fact exploiting the answers of about 1900 manufacturing firms on a wide range of contractual features, separately for domestic and foreign counterparties....

The study, aimed at evaluating the likely effects of the EC Directive on late payments, provides direct evidence that interfirm credit received by Italian manufacturing firms is, if ever, only slightly more expensive than bank loans. An econometric exercise shows that financial determinants have...

We extend the theoretical model of external corporate financing to the case when the buyers of the borrowing firm may default during the financing period. In our setup there is an asymmetric information and hence moral hazard between the lender and the borrower concerning the effrts of the...

This study addresses the relationship between product innovation and the demand and supply of trade credit. Theoretical as well as empirical studies are used to derive the hypothesis of a positive link between product innovation and trade credit demand and supply. Using a sample covering SMEs...