Trade credit and finance for firms--论文代写范文精选

论文的主要结果是,在整个样本期间,银行债务之间的替代和互补和贸易信贷几乎是等可能的。在危机时期,然而,消极的互补关系的概率增加了一倍多。此外,只有公司信贷质量高、中级金融约束能够替代之间的贸易信贷和银行贷款。下面的paper代写范文进行探讨。

  Trade credit is an important source of finance for firms, especially when firms find it difficult to obtain external funding via credit institutions. This channel is especially relevant in Europe because capital markets are less developed than in the United States. In this context, a long debated issue is whether trade credit and bank debt are external funding sources that are substitutes or complements for one another. The two possibilities have different implications for the business cycle. In the former case, economic activity will display higher volatility over time; in the latter case, trade credit might be an important mechanism for mitigating the effects of an adverse change in the availability of bank credit. 

  The main result of the paper is that, over the full sample period, substitution and complementarity between bank debt and trade credit are almost equally likely. During the crisis period, however, the probability of a negative complementary relationship more than doubled. Moreover, only firms with high credit quality and intermediate financial constraints were able to substitute between trade credit and bank loans. Empirical evidence for the euro area is not clear cut (Ferrando and Mulier 2013). Figure 1 shows the growth of trade credit and short-term debt to non-financial corporations in the euro area. Over recent years, trade credit has moved broadly in line with the business cycle. 

  This procyclical pattern of accounts payable is unsurprising, because accounts payable are closely linked to the exchange of goods and services and, hence, to economic activity. In general, trade credit has remained a stable source of finance for euro area companies but it tended to decline from 2005 to 2007, when bank credit was becoming easily accessible. During the recent financial crisis, there was an increase in the use of trade credit which likely compensated for the strong decline in short-term bank loans. Interestingly, the fact that the increase in the annual growth of accounts payable between non-financial firms has been more pronounced than the increase in nominal GDP growth may indicate that trade credit between companies has played a buffer role in the recent crisis. However, Figure 1 shows that in the first stages of the crisis the decline in trade credit was similar to the decline in bank debt – that is, these two sources of finance displayed a (negative) complementary relationship.

  Against this background, the paper sheds some light on the relationship between trade credit and bank debt. It does so using firm-level information. My first three remarks focus on some methodological aspects of the paper and my fourth on the conclusions of the paper. First, the main aim of the paper is to investigate what happened during the financial crisis to small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in a select group of European Union countries. Further, the authors narrowed their analysis by considering only SMEs that: had non-zero trade credit and non-zero bank debt; were in need of external finance; and experienced a negative shock to their bank debt. The resulting analysis is therefore confined to this specific, restricted sample and no information is given on the effect of these restrictions on the characteristics of the sample. It would be expected, for instance, that the use of trade credit:
• is more common in sectors where there is a physical good involved and less common in sectors providing services 
• is higher for manufacturers of differentiated goods than for manufacturers of standardised goods 
• is geographically differentiated – trade credit is more commonly used by firms located in southern euro area countries and less common in countries in the north.

  Hence, the sample analysed by the authors could differ from these characteristics and this could have implications for inferences about the overall economy. Second, the paper finds that SMEs with lower credit quality have more difficulties in offsetting a shock to their short-term bank debt via trade credit. I would question whether the credit quality of firms is really so important for trade credit, or whether it is the ability of firms to produce goods or provide services that is more relevant. In contrast with the paper’s results, there is evidence that trade credit is used as an instrument of price discrimination and it is often extended to buyers on the same basis, regardless of the buyer’s credit quality. Hence, financially weaker firms typically pay lower effective prices than financially stronger borrowers (Fitzpatrick and Lien 2013). 

  Furthermore, trade credit is also related to soft information/mutual trust (Berger and Udell 2006; Atradius 2014). Third, the paper finds that there is a non-linear relationship between credit quality and financial constraints affecting the probability of substitution between trade credit and bank debt. My doubts are related to the robustness of these findings and, in particular, the variable used to define financial constraints. The paper uses the Kaplan-Zingales index (KZ index), which is one of most popular measures of financial constraints. The actual KZ index is the result of the work of Lamont, Polk and Saá-Requejo (2001), who estimated an ordered logit model relating the degree of financial constraints (based on the way firms were classified in Kaplan and Zingales (1997)) to five readily available accounting variables – cash flow, market value, debt, dividends and cash holdings – each scaled by total assets. 

 The model is estimated on 49 firms that were categorised by their degree of financial constraints on the basis of other characteristics. The estimated regression coefficients can then be used to construct a KZ index score for any firm, using the coefficients from the original regression and the relevant accounting variables for the firm. A higher index value suggests that a firm is more constrained. The index loads positively on market-to-book ratio and leverage and negatively on cash flow, dividends and cash holdings. To summarise: it is an index based on estimations from the early 2000s on a sample of a very few US companies. 

  Many papers have found weaknesses with this indicator in detecting financial constraints (Farre-Mensa and Ljungqvist 2013). My additional concern with the KZ index is the application of this indicator to European firms, which have different capital structures, cash management and institutional frameworks compared with the US firms on which the index was originally based. I have suggested that the authors run some robustness checks using alternative measures of financial constraints. Such measures could be based on different a priori classifications or on business surveys, although there are limited data available. The European Central Bank has run a survey about access to finance and has used the replies of interviewed firms to construct an index of bank-constrained firms. 

  These firms are defined as firms that applied for loans and were rejected or firms that did not apply for fear of rejection. This index could easily be used by the authors (ECB 2014). My fourth, and final, comment is about the main result of the paper concerning the use of trade credit during the financial crisis. The paper claims that trade credit had limited scope to replace bank debt, particularly for firms that were facing financial constraints. I would question this strong conclusion on the basis of my previous remarks and also because other analysis that I and colleagues have carried out using survey data points to a different direction. 

  In particular, we found that bank-constrained firms used trade credit as an alternative source of finance during the crisis (ECB 2015). However, bank-constrained firms in euro area stressed countries (countries that suffered from the combination of the financial crisis and the sovereign debt crisis) found it more difficult to substitute towards trade credit than firms in non-stressed countries. To conclude, trade credit has played an important role during the financial crisis in Europe, but the interplay of bank debt and trade credit is complex. It depends on a variety of factors that go beyond the characteristics of firms and includes the overall economic conditions of the countries in which firms operate. 

  A point for policy reflection is related to the different purposes attached to bank loans and trade credit. The purpose of an SME loan typically falls into one of three categories: working capital financing, fixed asset financing and acquisition financing. By contrast, trade credit is typically associated only with working capital financing (Udell this volume). Firms that receive credit or equity experience a cash inflow that can be used in a flexible way; firms that receive trade credit do not experience a cash inflow. This difference is important when considering the effect of trade credit and other finance on investment and growth decisions of firms.

  51Due网站原创范文除特殊说明外一切图文著作权归51Due所有；未经51Due官方授权谢绝任何用途转载或刊发于媒体。如发生侵犯著作权现象，51Due保留一切法律追诉权。
  更多paper代写范文欢迎访问我们主页 www.51due.com 当然有paper代写需求可以和我们24小时在线客服QQ:800020041 联系交流。-X