IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/worlde/v37y2014i11p1507-1540.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Trade Credits and Bank Credits in International Trade: Substitutes or Complements?

Author

Listed:
  • Martina Engemann
  • Katharina Eck
  • Monika Schnitzer

Abstract

type="main" xml:id="twec12167-abs-0001"> Trade credits are an important financing tool for internationally active firms. This is surprising, as trade credits are generally more expensive than bank credits and thus a costly substitute for bank financing. In this paper, we investigate the relation between trade credits and bank credits for exporting firms. We develop a theoretical model and show that trade credits convey a quality signal which reduces the risk of the transaction and may thus facilitate obtaining additional bank credits. Hence, exporters who are not able to obtain bank credits in the first place use trade credits and bank credits complementarily. Using panel data on large German manufacturing firms, we provide supportive evidence for our theoretical predictions. In general, trade credits and bank credits are substitutes. For financially constrained exporters, the overall substitution effect is attenuated which is consistent with a positive signalling effect.

Suggested Citation

  • Martina Engemann & Katharina Eck & Monika Schnitzer, 2014. "Trade Credits and Bank Credits in International Trade: Substitutes or Complements?," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(11), pages 1507-1540, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:worlde:v:37:y:2014:i:11:p:1507-1540
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/twec.2014.37.issue-11
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Andrew B. Bernard & J. Bradford Jensen & Stephen J. Redding & Peter K. Schott, 2007. "Firms in International Trade," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 21(3), pages 105-130, Summer.
    2. Flora Bellone & Patrick Musso & Lionel Nesta & Stefano Schiavo, 2010. "Financial Constraints and Firm Export Behaviour," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(3), pages 347-373, March.
    3. Arellano, Manuel & Bover, Olympia, 1995. "Another look at the instrumental variable estimation of error-components models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 68(1), pages 29-51, July.
    4. Beck, Thorsten & Levine, Ross, 2004. "Stock markets, banks, and growth: Panel evidence," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 423-442, March.
    5. Marc J. Melitz, 2003. "The Impact of Trade on Intra-Industry Reallocations and Aggregate Industry Productivity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 71(6), pages 1695-1725, November.
    6. Michael Kremer, 1993. "The O-Ring Theory of Economic Development," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 108(3), pages 551-575.
    7. Petersen, Mitchell A & Rajan, Raghuram G, 1997. "Trade Credit: Theories and Evidence," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 10(3), pages 661-691.
    8. Raymond Fisman & Inessa Love, 2003. "Trade Credit, Financial Intermediary Development, and Industry Growth," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 58(1), pages 353-374, February.
    9. Pol Antràs & C. Fritz Foley, 2015. "Poultry in Motion: A Study of International Trade Finance Practices," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 123(4), pages 853-901.
    10. Steven M. Fazzari & R. Glenn Hubbard & Bruce C. Petersen, 1988. "Financing Constraints and Corporate Investment," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 19(1), pages 141-206.
    11. Robert C. Feenstra & Zhiyuan Li & Miaojie Yu, 2014. "Exports and Credit Constraints under Incomplete Information: Theory and Evidence from China," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 96(4), pages 729-744, October.
    12. Elhanan Helpman & Marc J. Melitz & Stephen R. Yeaple, 2004. "Export Versus FDI with Heterogeneous Firms," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(1), pages 300-316, March.
    13. Sascha O. Becker & Klaus Wohlrabe, 2008. "European Data Watch: Micro Data at the Ifo Institute for Economic Research – The “Ifo Business Survey”, Usage and Access," Schmollers Jahrbuch : Journal of Applied Social Science Studies / Zeitschrift für Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaften, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin, vol. 128(2), pages 307-319.
    14. Mariassunta Giannetti & Mike Burkart & Tore Ellingsen, 2011. "What You Sell Is What You Lend? Explaining Trade Credit Contracts," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 24(4), pages 1261-1298.
    15. Lee, Yul W. & Stowe, John D., 1993. "Product Risk, Asymmetric Information, and Trade Credit," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 28(2), pages 285-300, June.
    16. Leora Klapper & Luc Laeven & Raghuram Rajan, 2012. "Trade Credit Contracts," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 25(3), pages 838-867.
    17. Biais, Bruno & Gollier, Christian, 1997. "Trade Credit and Credit Rationing," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 10(4), pages 903-937.
    18. Manuel Arellano & Stephen Bond, 1991. "Some Tests of Specification for Panel Data: Monte Carlo Evidence and an Application to Employment Equations," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 58(2), pages 277-297.
    19. Windmeijer, Frank, 2005. "A finite sample correction for the variance of linear efficient two-step GMM estimators," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 126(1), pages 25-51, May.
    20. Steven N. Kaplan & Luigi Zingales, 1997. "Do Investment-Cash Flow Sensitivities Provide Useful Measures of Financing Constraints?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(1), pages 169-215.
    21. Anderson, T. W. & Hsiao, Cheng, 1982. "Formulation and estimation of dynamic models using panel data," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 18(1), pages 47-82, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Box, Travis & Davis, Ryan & Hill, Matthew & Lawrey, Chris, 2018. "Operating performance and aggressive trade credit policies," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 89(C), pages 192-208.
    2. Katharina Eck & Martina Engemann & Monika Schnitzer, 2015. "How trade credits foster exporting," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 151(1), pages 73-101, February.
    3. P. Beaumont, 2017. "Time is Money: Cash-Flow Risk and Export Market Behavior," Documents de Travail de l'Insee - INSEE Working Papers g2017-10, Institut National de la Statistique et des Etudes Economiques.
    4. Schmidt-Eisenlohr, Tim, 2013. "Towards a theory of trade finance," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(1), pages 96-112.
    5. Eck, Katharina & Engemann, Martina & Schnitzer, Monika, 2012. "How Trade Credits Foster International Trade," Discussion Paper Series of SFB/TR 15 Governance and the Efficiency of Economic Systems 379, Free University of Berlin, Humboldt University of Berlin, University of Bonn, University of Mannheim, University of Munich.
    6. Federico J. Diez & Jesse Mora & Alan C. Spearot, 2016. "Firms in international trade," Working Papers 16-25, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
    7. Yan, Bing & Zhang, Yu & Shen, Yanzhi & Han, Jian, 2018. "Productivity, financial constraints and outward foreign direct investment: Firm-level evidence," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 47-64.
    8. Dai, Mi & Nucci, Francesco & Pozzolo, Alberto F. & Xu, Jianwei, 2021. "Access to finance and the exchange rate elasticity of exports," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 115(C).
    9. Mariarosaria Agostino & Francesco Trivieri, 2014. "Does trade credit play a signalling role? Some evidence from SMEs microdata," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 42(1), pages 131-151, January.
    10. Fauceglia, Dario, 2015. "Credit constraints, firm exports and financial development: Evidence from developing countries," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 53-66.
    11. McGuinness, Gerard & Hogan, Teresa & Powell, Ronan, 2018. "European trade credit use and SME survival," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 81-103.
    12. Ala’a Adden Abuhommous & Tareq Mashoka, 2018. "A dynamic approach to accounts receivable: the case of Jordanian firms," Eurasian Business Review, Springer;Eurasia Business and Economics Society, vol. 8(2), pages 171-191, June.
    13. Pedro J. García-Teruel & Pedro Martínez-Solano & Juan P. Sánchez-Ballesta, 2014. "Supplier Financing and Earnings Quality," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 41(9-10), pages 1193-1211, November.
    14. Falavigna, Greta & Ippoliti, Roberto, 2023. "SMEs’ behavior under financial constraints: An empirical investigation on the legal environment and the substitution effect with tax arrears," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 66(C).
    15. D'Mello, Ranjan & Toscano, Francesca, 2020. "Economic policy uncertainty and short-term financing: The case of trade credit," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    16. Van Tien Nguyen & Ngoc Thang Doan, 2023. "Open account, import decision and financial constraints: A cross‐country firm‐level study," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(4), pages 3918-3937, October.
    17. Alvaro Garcia-Marin & Santiago Justel & Tim Schmidt-Eisenlohr, 2019. "Trade Credit, Markups, and Relationships," CESifo Working Paper Series 7600, CESifo.
    18. Leora Klapper & Luc Laeven & Raghuram Rajan, 2012. "Trade Credit Contracts," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 25(3), pages 838-867.
    19. Jean‐Noël Barrot & Ramana Nanda, 2020. "The Employment Effects of Faster Payment: Evidence from the Federal Quickpay Reform," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 75(6), pages 3139-3173, December.
    20. Costello, Anna M., 2019. "The value of collateral in trade finance," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 134(1), pages 70-90.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • F10 - International Economics - - Trade - - - General
    • G30 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:worlde:v:37:y:2014:i:11:p:1507-1540. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0378-5920 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.