Market Power and the Matching of Trade Credit Terms
This paper studies the decision of firms to extend trade credit to customers and its relation with their financing decisions. The authors use a novel firm-level database of Chinese SMEs with unique information on market power in both output and inp...
Main Authors: | , |
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Format: | Policy Research Working Paper |
Language: | English |
Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2012
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Subjects: | |
Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2008/10/9950546/market-power-matching-trade-credit-terms http://hdl.handle.net/10986/6913 |
Summary: | This paper studies the decision of firms
to extend trade credit to customers and its relation with
their financing decisions. The authors use a novel
firm-level database of Chinese SMEs with unique information
on market power in both output and input markets and on the
amount, terms, and payment history of trade credit
simultaneously extended to customers (accounts receivable)
and received from suppliers (accounts payable). The analysis
shows that suppliers with relatively weaker market power are
more likely to extend trade credit and have a larger share
of goods sold on credit. Examination of the importance of
financial constraints reveals that access to bank financing
and profitability are not significantly related to trade
credit supply. Rather, firms that receive trade credit from
their own suppliers are more likely to extend trade credit
to their customers, and to "match maturity"
between the contract terms of payables and receivables. This
matching practice is more likely used when firms face strong
competition in the product market (relative to their
customers), and enjoy strong market power in the input
market (relative to their suppliers). These results
highlight the importance of supply chain financing for
market competition and risk management in credit constrained firms. |
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