a b s t r a c t An analysis has been performed, from a financial perspective, on the behaviour of the recently constituted Spanish REITs (SOCIMIs) compared to equivalent investment vehicles in other markets. The aim is to broaden this research field, which has barely been studied so far. It is shown that the creation of a SOCIMI is an effective alternative for companies to obtain liquidity through their real estate assets, compared to other more common alternatives such as the disposal of assets or obtaining bank finance. Furthermore, a model has been defined that can forecast the ratio obtained when dividing market capitalization by the Net Asset Value (P/NAV) of a SOCIMI, which is a key variable for both investors and companies interested

While trade credit is traditionally considered as a substitute for bank loans, recent theoretical papers (e.g. Biais and Gollier (1997)) suggest that bank debt and trade credit can also be considered as two complementary sources of financing. By using US small businesses data (NSSBF 1998), this paper provides an empirical analysis of these hypotheses. The empirical findings are consistent with the hypothesis that trade credit helps firms to improve their reputation. The results show that trade credit can work as a signal about firm's quality and thus facilitates access to bank debt. Keywords: Bank, Trade credit, Informational asymetry

While many theories of accounts payable and receivable are related to firm performance, there has not been a direct test whether firms actively use them to manage their growth. We argue that it is not just the accounts payable but also the accounts receivable that matter. While the former help to alleviate imperfections in the financial market, the latter do so in the product market. Using over 2.5 million observations for 600.000 firms in 8 euro area countries in the period 1993–2009, we show that firms use the trade credit channel to manage growth. In countries where the trade credit channel is more present, the marginal impact is lower, but the total impact is still higher. Further, firms that are more vulnerable to financial market imperfections, rely more on the trade credit channel to manage growth. Finally, we show that also the overall conditions of the financial market matter for the importance of the trade credit channel for growth.

When firm gives credit period to its customers for generating credit sales in addition to cash sales, then it is quite possible that some of the cash customers would also take benefit of trade credit and buy on credit. Thus, decision of granting trade credit may have disintegrating effect on cash sales apart from stimulating new credit sales. Moreover, credit policy through its impact on demand becomes the determinant of inventory policy, which is intended to meet that demand. Therefore, inventory and credit policies are interrelated which should be determined simultaneously in a systems perspective. In this paper, a mathematical model is developed in discounted cash flow (DCF) framework to jointly determine inventory and credit policies in the presence of stimulating as well as disintegrating effect of credit period on demand. Numerical example and sensitivity analysis are presented to illustrate effectiveness of the model and results are discussed.

We provide the first empirical study of the relationship between corporate working capital management and shareholders' wealth. Examining US corporations from 1990 through 2006, we find evidence that: the incremental dollar invested in net operating working capital is worth less than the incremental dollar held in cash for the average firm; the valuation of the incremental dollar invested in net operating working capital is significantly influenced by a firm's future sales expectations, its debt load, its financial constraints, and its bankruptcy risk; and the value of the incremental dollar extended in credit to one's customers has a greater effect on shareholders' wealth than the incremental dollar invested in inventories for the average firm. Copyright 2013, Oxford University Press.

We propose a simple theory to account for the prevalence of interfirm credit at an interest rate of zero. A downstream firm trades off inventory holding costs against lost sales. Lost final sales impose a negative externality on the upstream firm. The solution requires a subsidy limited by the value of inputs. Allowing the downstream firm to pay with a delay is precisely such a solution. A reverse externality accounts for the use of prepayment. We clarify how input prices vary with such policies, and when trade credit/prepayment is more efficient than pure input price adjustments. (JEL D21, D62, D92, G31, L25)

We propose a simple theory of trade credit and prepayment. A downstream firm trades off inventory holding costs against lost sales. Lost final sales impose a negative externality on the upstream firm. We show that allowing the downstream firm to pay with a delay, an arrangement known as “trade credit,” is precisely the solution to the problem. Solving a reverse externality accounts for the use of prepayment for inputs, even in the absence of any risk of default by the downstream firm. We clarify previously unexplained facts including the universal presence of a zerointerest component in trade credit terms, and the non-responsiveness of interest charges to fluctuations in the bank rate as well as market demand. We explain why trade credit is short term credit and why the level of provision is negatively related to sales and profit and inventory, but positively related to the profit margin. Finally, we show that under trade credit, inventory investment is invariant to the real interest rate for a wide range of parameters, explaining the puzzle posed by Blinder and Maccini (1991). This implies that standard empirical inventory models would gain explanatory power by including the subsidy effect of accounts payable.

We examine a novel, but economically important, characterization of trade credit relationships in which large investment-grade buyers borrow from their smaller suppliers. Using a matched sample of large retail buyers and their much smaller suppliers, we find that slower payment terms by large retailers are associated with lower investment at the supplier level. The effects are sharpest during periods of tight bank credit and for firms which we might otherwise characterize as financially constrained. The opportunity cost of extending credit to large buyers appears to be positive and sharply increasing in the financial frictions facing a firm.

Using a dyadic panel data set that links U.S. suppliers with their major buyers, we study how trade credit responds to various types of competition in supply chains, as well as the impact of trade credit on firm performance. We find that suppliers with smaller market share are associated with more trade credit, confirming that suppliers with weak market power use trade credit as a competitive tool. Next, we find that buyers with larger market share are associated with more trade credit, whereas suppliers selling to a concentrated buyer base are associated with less trade credit; by differentiating competition in buyers’ markets from competition between supply chain partners, we show that the two types of competition have different impacts on trade credit. In studying the impact of trade credit on firm performance, we make the distinction between an industry-average trade credit and an individual supply chain’s deviation from such an industry average. When suppliers offer trade credit at their industry-ave...

Unlike traditional bank credit, commercial credit can not only optimize capital flow, but also affect the time interval in supply chain. In order to test the relationship between different financing modes of SMEs in supply chain. This paper takes the SMEs as research samples, from the perspective of supply chain, to test the relationship between commercial credit and bank credit. We find that the commercial credit can supplement bank credit. From the perspective of supply chain, we also validate the impact of supply chain concentration on the complementary relationship between commercial credit and bank credit. By building panel data model, we find that supplier concentration weakens the complementary relationship between commercial credit and bank credit, while customer concentration will promote the complementary relationship between commercial credit and bank credit.

Trade credit--credit extended by a seller who does not require immediate payment for delivery of a product--is an important source of funds for business customers. In 1987, such credit accounted for about 15 percent of the liabilities of nonfarm nonfinancial businesses in the United States, approximately the same percentage of liabilities as these firms' nonmortgage loans from banks. Trade credit apparently is especially important for small businesses: In the same year, it accounted for about 20 percent of small firms' liabilities. ; Businesses that choose to finance their purchases through trade credit have several options for payment: They may pay the supplier promptly and in so doing receive a cash discount; wait until the bill's due date and consequently pay the interest cost implicit in forgoing the cash discount, at a rate frequently higher than the rate on credit from institutional lenders; or pay late, after the bill's due date, and thereby risk incurring additional costs in the form of explicit interest charges or penalties, or both. Although trade credit is an important source of funds for small businesses, little has been known about the reasons business customers use it. ; Theoreticians have linked the use of trade credit to a transaction motive--a desire to realize economies in cash management--and to a financing motive--use of trade credit because credit from other sources, particularly from financial institutions, is limited. These theories are not mutually exclusive, yet no earlier study has integrated the two in a single theoretical or empirical model. Previous studies have focused on one or the other of the motives, and available empirical evidence on trade credit use, especially by small businesses, is limited. ; This paper presents a model of trade credit demand that incorporates both the transaction and financing theories of trade credit use. The model relates characteristics of the firm to trade credit use associated with either the transaction or the financing motive. One important feature of the model is a link between trade credit use and credit rationing. This link permits an empirical test for the presence of rationing in markets for business credit. ; The model of trade credit demand was used to analyze small businesses' decisions about using trade credit at all, about making late payments, and about the amount of trade credit to use. The data came from the National Survey of Small Business Finances, a one-time survey of a nationally representative sample of about 3,400 businesses having 500 or fewer employees that were operating at the end of December 1987. (The survey was conducted in 1988-89 for the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the U.S. Small Business Administration.) ; The results suggest that both the transaction and financing motives explain small businesses' use of trade credit. Characteristics of firms associated with the transaction motive--notably, a relatively large volume of purchases and relatively great variability in the timing of delivery of the purchases--were significantly related to a greater probability of using trade credit and a greater dollar amount of trade credit outstanding. Similarly, firm characteristics associated with a financing motive--relatively higher business and financial risk, among others--were significantly related not only to a greater probability of using trade credit and a greater dollar amount of trade credit outstanding, but also to a greater probability that the firm made some percentage of its payments on trade credit after the due date. These results are consistent with the predictions of theoretical models of transaction and financing motives for trade credit use. ; The results suggest that the financing motive does not stem from the substitutability of trade credit and institutional credit. Instead, firms having relatively large amounts of short-term institutional credit were also the largest users of trade credit. This finding is consistent with the hypothesis that small businesses are subject to credit rationing by financial institutions: Firms with already-high levels of debt from financial institutions, facing limitations on additional institutional credit, turn to trade credit as a source of additional credit despite the high implicit interest cost. ; Also investigated using the model of trade credit demand was the relative importance of the transaction and financing motives. The size of the financing component of trade credit demand ranged from about two-fifths to one-half the estimated size of the transaction component. Clearly, each motive accounts for a sizable portion of total trade credit demand. Thus, both the transaction motive and the financing motive appear to be economically significant determinants of trade credit use.

Trade credit remains the single largest source of short-term business credit in the United States and other nations around the world. Why do production firms act as financial intermediaries - a role usually reserved for banks? In "Trade Credit: Why Do Production Firms Act as Financial Intermediaries?" Mitchell Berlin focuses on explanations that view trade credit as a method of monitoring and enforcing loan contracts to relatively risky firms. He also examines explanations in which a firm's long-term supply relationship helps it to make better credit decisions than a bank world.

Trade credit is one of the most important sources of short-term external finance for small firms. Previous literature has focused mainly on the substitution of bank loans for trade credit during monetary tightening among many firms, but in this paper we investigate the role of trade credit during the banking crisis in Japan. The basic motivation is to explore whether the substitution hypothesis still holds even under serious financial turbulence. Our main results suggest that the substitution hypothesis held in Japan when the banking sector was healthy, but broke down during the banking crisis. More precisely, both bank loans and trade credit contracted simultaneously during the crisis. Deteriorated bank health might have been primarily responsible for the widespread declines of credit to small and medium size firms in Japan during the banking crisis.

Trade credit is a widely adopted industry practice. Prior research has focused on how trade credit benefits firms by improving vertical supply chain relationships. This paper offers a novel perspective by examining whether trade credit benefits suppliers through a horizontal channel. Under the classic Bertrand competition framework, we analyze two competing firms’ price decisions with and without trade credit. We find that when the firms are financially constrained, trade credit softens horizontal price competition. Specifically, with trade credit, the firms will behave less aggressively in setting their prices for fear of incurring additional financing costs, resulting in equilibrium prices above the marginal cost, even if the products are perfect substitutes. Equilibrium profits under trade credit may thus be strictly higher than those under cash contracts. Furthermore, we find that with trade credit, a financially stronger firm may be able to exclude its weaker competitor from the market. We also inves...

Trade credit arises when a buyer delays payment for purchased goods or services. Its nature has predominantly been an area of inquiry for researchers from the disciplines of finance, marketing, and economics but it has received relatively little attention in other domains. In our article, we provide an integrative review of the existing literature and discuss conflicting study outcomes. We organize the relevant literature into seven areas of inquiry and analyze four in detail: trade credit motives, order quantity decisions, credit term decisions, and settlement period decisions. Additionally, we derive a detailed agenda for future research in these areas.

Trade credit and bank credit constitute two of the most important external sources of finance for small firms. The purpose of this paper, first and foremost, is to explore the complementary or substitutive relationship between trade credit and bank credit by considering the joint determination of both resources on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and second, it analyses how the country institutional factors affect these two resources. Specifically, we introduce the efficiency of the legal system and the development of the financial sector. For the empirical analysis, we use a simultaneous equations model across a sample of 60,377 SMEs operating in 12 European Union countries over the period 2008–2014. The results suggest that two resources, trade credit and short-term bank credit, are simultaneously determined and negatively related in SMEs. The results also suggest that trade credit and bank credit depend on country institutional factors.

This study investigates the interdependence between trade and bank credit among 468 Portuguese small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs). The results show that a single bank relationship is prevalent among Portuguese SMEs, indicating that the proprietary borrower information that banks obtain through their relationship results in an information monopoly that creates a holdup problem and leads to high interest rates. Suppliers that can control their customers' credit risk may provide additional credit and thus help alleviate concerns associated with holdup costs. Trade credit is a viable alternative to short‐term debt, especially when firms' main bank is unwilling to increase its exposure to liquidity constraints.

This paper tests adverse selection in the market for child care. A unique data set containing quality measures of various characteristics of child care provided by 746 rooms in 400 centers, as well as the evaluation of the same attributes by 3,490 affiliated consumers (parents) in the U.S., is employed. Comparisons of consumer evaluations of quality to actual quality show that after adjusting for scale effects, parents are weakly rational. The hypothesis of strong rationality is rejected, indicating that parents do not utilize all available information in forming their assessment of quality. The results demonstrate the existence of information asymmetry and adverse selection in the market, which provide an explanation for low average quality in the U.S. child care market.

This paper studies the optimal trade credit term decision in an extended economic ordering quantity (EOQ) framework that incorporates a default risk component. A principal-agent bilevel programming model with costs minimization objectives is set up to derive the incentive-compatible credit term. The supplier determines the credit term as the leader in the first level programming, by balancing her/his financing capacity with the retailer's default risk, order behavior and cost shifting. At the second level, the retailer makes decisions on ordering and payment time by reacting on the term offered by the supplier. A first order condition solution procedure is derived for the bilevel programming when credit term is confined within the practically feasible interval. Two key results are obtained - the condition to derive incentive-compatible credit term, and an equation system to derive threshold default risk criterion filtering retailers suitable for credit granting. Numerical experiments show that the capital cost of the supplier is the most important factor determining the credit term. Default risk acts like a filtering criterion for selecting retailers suitable for credit granting. Empirical evidence supporting our theoretical considerations is obtained by estimating three panel econometric models, using a dataset from China's listed companies.

This paper provides a theoretical explanation for the choice of payment terms under which a company sells its products. In our model, these terms are chosen to permit sellers or buyers to specialize at repairing defects if they are equally well-informed about quality or if one has significantly lower repair costs than the other. Otherwise, the terms are chosen to signal product quality. We also develop the empirical implications of this theory by predicting a seller's choice of payment terms based on the characteristics of its product market.