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This paper investigates the impact of business strategy on firms’ trade credit policies. We find that firms following an innovation-oriented strategy (prospectors) offer significantly more trade credit to their customers than those following an efficiency-oriented strategy (defenders). Furthermore, by exploiting two exogenous shocks to the supplies of high-skill employees and bank credit, we find that prospectors curtail trade credit in response to the reduction of talent mobility following the adoption of Inevitable Disclosure Doctrine, whereas defenders significantly increase provisions of trade credit following the increase in bank credit supply due to the relaxation in interstate branching regulations. Additional evidence substantiates that prospectors increasing trade credit provisions enjoy higher sales generation efficiency and superior performance. Finally, our supply chain analysis documents that prospectors also receive significantly more trade credit from their suppliers. Collectively, our findings highlight that business strategy is an important yet intrinsic determinant of supply chain financing.

Due to poor ability to resist risks, penniless retailers face high bankruptcy risk, which may spread to suppliers who provide trade credit for them and then affect suppliers’ trade credit provision decision. A supplier who transacts with downstream retailers with heterogeneous credit ratings has three trade credit provision strategies: null (the supplier does not provide trade credit), exclusive (the supplier provides trade credit for only a part of retailers), and nonchalant trade credit provision (the supplier provides trade credit for all retailers). In this study, we establish a two-echelon supply chain model comprising one supplier and two capital-constrained retailers to investigate the supplier’s and retailers’ preferences for different trade credit provision patterns. By analyzing and comparing the three trade credit provision strategies, we find that the supplier is always beneficial from providing nonchalant trade credit. However, nonchalant trade credit provision is only attractive for the excluded retailer when his creditworthiness is poor and for the privileged retailer, nonchalant trade credit provision is never a preferable option, which leads to a counterintuitive situation that the three parties can never reach an agreement on trade credit provision pattern. Our results indicate that credit rating information serves as a risk warner for the supplier, allowing the supplier to evaluate the retailers’ repayment ability accurately and set interest rates accordingly, but this is unfavorable to the retailers. For policy-makers, they should start with reducing the risk of default in trade credit to promote the development of trade credit.

With the development of e-commerce, manufacturers now have the opportunity to compete with existing retail channels by introducing their direct channels. Encroachment weakens the strength of retail channels, which may affect the manufacturer's decision on whether to provide trade credit financing to retailers. This study investigates the strategic interaction between manufacturer's encroachment and retailers’ financing choices (trade credit financing or external financing) in a supply chain consisting of a manufacturer and two capital-constrained retailers. We find that only encroachment cost below a certain threshold will make the manufacturer encroach on the market, while manufacturer encroachment is harmful to capital-constrained retailers. Surprisingly, these retailers can expand the ratios of equity financing in anticipation of manufacturer encroachment, which is a new strategic role of equity financing. In addition, the more intense the channel competition (the larger the credit gap between the two retailers) is, the less (more) likely the manufacturer will be to encroach. Further, we find that retailers prefer trade credit (external) financing at a low (high) bank loan interest rate in a non-encroachment scenario, while they prefer external financing in an encroachment scenario. However, the manufacturer always prefers the case that both retailers choosing external financing. Finally, there are financing choice conflicts between the manufacturer and retailers in the non-encroachment scenario. A high-credit retailer choosing trade credit financing may make all members achieve a Pareto improvement when the credit gap between two retailers is large; otherwise, both retailers choosing external financing is a Pareto improvement.

A consignment stock (CS) policy is a promising supply chain coordination mechanism. Delay-in-payments is a financing arrangement that facilitates purchases and increases sales by postposing a payment to some future time. It lowers costs and increases profitability, somewhat like what CS does. A study in the literature shows that combing the two reaps more benefits by considering different lot sizing and payment scenarios. Buy now, pay later, technically delay-in-payments, is a business practice for increasing sales. This paper revisits that work by assuming demand increases with the length of the delay period. This increases sales and, subsequently, profits beyond what that study reports.

With over half a trillion dollars in trade credit flowing between firms in the United States, it is critically important for managers to understand how the trade credit that their firm receives and provides affect its value. Trade credit is a strategic investment in supply chain relationships that allows the recipient to make payment later rather than at the time of the sale. A firm provides trade credit to its downstream business customers and also receives trade credit from its upstream suppliers. Although research has shown that provided trade credit builds a firm’s shareholder value, it has not examined what effect, if any, received trade credit has on the firm’s value. As a result, one might assume that received trade credit affects firm value in the same manner as provided trade credit. We argue otherwise and show that received trade credit and provided trade credit have differential effects on firm value. Received trade credit has a negative direct effect and a positive indirect effect (through profit), whereas provided trade credit has a positive direct effect and a negative indirect effect. The difference in direct effects hinges on the disparate nature of dependence in the supply chain. Provided trade credit increases customers’ dependence on the firm, building the firm’s value. In contrast, received trade credit increases the firm’s dependence on its suppliers, destroying the firm’s value. Empirical results using a sample of 2804 firms from 1986 to 2017 provide robust support for the hypotheses. They show that managers risk overestimating the value of a 1 SD increase in received (provided) trade credit by $284.74 ($74.95) million, on average, if they do not consider both the direct and indirect effects it has on their firm’s value.

This study investigates whether and how social security contributions affect corporate financing decisions. Treating the 2011 Social Insurance Law in China as a quasi-natural experiment, our difference-in-differences framework utilizes two-dimensional variations: initial social security contribution rates across firms (i.e., high vs. low) and year (i.e., before and after 2011). We find that more social security contributions cause firms to issue less debt in their capital structure, particularly firms with more severe labor market frictions, greater labor intensity, unhealthier financial status, tighter financial constraints, and those located in low-income areas with less developed financial systems and greater fiscal pressure. Mechanism tests show that firms’ operating leverage, bank credit default risk, and profitability volatility increase, while the supply of trade credit decreases, which is consistent with the financial distress hypothesis. The findings suggest that firms tend to choose conservative financing policies to mitigate the likelihood of financial distress caused by increasing social security contributions.

In today's competitive business situation, the supplier frequently offers his or her retailers a permissible delay period to stimulate sales. In addition, the capacity of any warehouse is limited in practice; thus, the retailer needs an additional rented warehouse to store the excess units when the order quantity exceeds the capacity of the own warehouse. Furthermore, with the globalization of the marketing policy, the supplier may provide the retailer a discounted price if the quantity of purchase is large enough. Green inventory management reduces the environmental impacts of a business without lacking its profit. Considering all of the factors mentioned above, in this paper, we study a green economic order quantity model with capacity constraint under order-size-dependent trade credit and all-units discount along with minimizing carbon for a cleaner environment. The paper discusses all the potential cases, which may occur in green inventory models with carbon emission cost under different allowable delay in payments. Shortages are allowed and partially backordered. The main objective is to determine the sustainable optimal ordering strategies for retailers and decide whether a rented warehouse (RW) is to obtain ordering and replenishment policies for a retailer such that the retailer’s annual profit is maximized. First, we prove that the conditions of the objective functions have interior minimizer value and the closed-form optimal solution is found. Next, an algorithm is developed to determining the global optimal solution of the problem. Finally, some management insights are drawn by observing the applicability of the developed algorithm and also by performing sensitivity analyses on different parameters.

Credit policy is a set of temporary payment terms agreed between seller and buyer, in a form of credit. Credit expedites some of the complicated process organization experienced. Normally, the process required high level approval in order to complete procure activities or business transaction. In Malaysia, the credit policy has become one of the sales tools to secure more business, and identify new business opportunities. However, it is unsure to what extent the credit policy helps on firm performance. Thus, the aim of this study is to investigate the relation, the factors and the influence. The research tested on Malaysian manufacturers. A total of 35 survey questionnaires were received from Malaysian manufacturers and the data has been analysed using Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) software. Three out of four dimensional factors were rejected; credit structure, receivables management and inventory control. Only one of the factors was accepted and has significant impact on firm performance which is payables management. The results of the study revealed 41% of firm performance were depending on credit policy. This study fills the gap in the literature of credit policy conducted in Malaysia.

Nowadays, in a competitive market circumstance, a distributor/wholesaler permits a settled trade credit to the retailer(s) for more deal, and in turn, retailer offers a fraction of that credit period to the customers for the quick-moving of the business, i.e. to increase the demand. In reality, all the customers are not fully trustworthy. There are some customers who do not pay the dues after enjoying the trade credit. The number of default customers increases with the increase in trade credit period given to them. Thus, these two contradict each other. There is a decent market with increasing demand for greener (contamination free) item(s), especially for deteriorating item(s). Here, in the present investigation, customers’ demand increases with both the trade credit given to customers and the greenness of the product. Obviously, the price tag will be higher for green items. Increased price always negates the demand. Hence, greenness and the increased price of the green products are contradictory to each other. Once more, to reduce the deterioration rate, the retailer incurs an expenditure termed as preservation technology cost. Due to preservation, deterioration of the items decreases but cost increases. Here, control of deterioration and preservation act contradictory to each other. The base demand, effects (coefficients) of the trade credit, and greenness are taken as fuzzy. Incorporating the above facts, a model is developed with a fuzzy differential equation and solved by Chalco-Cano $$\alpha $$ -cut method. The profit is calculated by assuming two-level trade credit and default customers. In this investigation, a new concept of clearing the supplier’s dues is introduced. Instead of payment of all dues at the end of business cycle period, the retailer clears his dues as and when he has sufficient money for this purpose. Numerical experiments for different cases are performed along with their physical interpretations. Imprecise nature of the profit is shown through its membership function and depicted graphically. Interestingly, it is demonstrated that positive effect of deterioration due to the increase in preservation technology and increase in profit due to greenness are up to certain extent. After that, these have the reverse effects.

This study examines the effects of dynamic discounting based credit payment on a supply chain network design problem. Dynamic discounting based credit payment is a supply chain finance policy wherein the supplier provides a credit period to a distribution center (DC) with a discount applied if the DC pays the supplier before the end of the credit period. This study also considers the time value of money and applies discounted cash flows to formulate a model that determines the DC’s optimal replenishment cycle, selling price, and influence area while maximizing the present value of the total profit. The continuous approximation approach is applied to formulate a mathematical model of the problems, and an algorithm based on non-linear optimization is established to solve the problem. A numerical example and a sensitivity analysis are provided to present the proposed model and solution approach and to illustrate the effect of each cost on the decisions and profit.

Purpose This study aims to explore changes in working capital management (WCM) practices in response to economic downturns, especially during the coronavirus pandemic. Design/methodology/approach This study adopts an interpretative approach. This paper used semi-structured interviews with 2 finance directors and 13 top managers for data collection. This paper used thematic analysis for analysing the interview data. Findings The study findings suggest that the traditional ways of managing working capital may no longer be sufficient during a crisis. Instead, dynamic financing, trade credit policy and continuous staff training to develop new skills are alternative WCM practices to navigate the challenges of a crisis. Further, this paper finds that economic conditions, such as inflation rates, interest rates, exchange rates and government policy, negatively affect WCM. Practical implications The study findings highlight practical issues that may help firms meet their present and future financing needs, manage their day-to-day operational activities and enhance performance, both operational and financial. The study is beneficial for regulators in understanding a firm’s constraints during crises and respond appropriately. Originality/value This is the first study, to the best of the knowledge that uses a qualitative approach to investigate the impact of economic downturns on WCM practices of firms. Thus, this study offers new insights into the fundamentals of WCM practices during crises.

The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic has undoubtedly caused many perturbations, at the same time hindering the functioning and operation of enterprises from various industries, which, due to the often inability to conduct business, found themselves in a very difficult financial situation, with a difficult ability to settle their liabilities. Too high share of receivables that are not settled in a timely manner can result in various problems for enterprises, including, in particular, financial problems that can lead to large-scale bankruptcy. Considering a huge number of connections between individual entities, the bankruptcy of one may pose a risk of a wave of bankruptcy of others. The paper aims to analyze the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the payment situation of Polish enterprises. The research was conducted on the basis of an analysis of data on the payment situation of Polish enterprises from selected industries. Basic descriptive statistics was used in the study to characterize the material. The nonparametric Wilcoxon pair order test, which is the equivalent of the Student's t-test for related variables, was used for the research. The research proved that at enterprises from almost every industry, the value of debts at the end of the second quarter of 2020 was higher than in the first quarter. It can therefore be concluded that the outbreak of the pandemic contributed to an increase in arrears, which, in turn, resulted in an increased risk of doing business. The greater the share of arrears with contractors, the greater the risk of financial problems at the enterprise, and hence the increased risk of bankruptcy. © 2021 Robert Dankiewicz, Bartlomiej Balawejder, Tomasz Tomczyk, Viktor Trynchuk.

Purpose: Trade credit is one of the main sources of funding for global companies. The importance of trade credit can also be seen from the proportion of investment that is financed through it. Despite the potential importance of trade credit, limited attention has been paid to its role and use, especially in developing countries. The main aim of the study was to establish the determinants of trade credit and moderating role of the age of the firms listed in Nairobi securities exchange. Methodology: The study adopted an explanatory research design which was guided by both the transaction cost and the credit substitution theories. The study was based in firms listed on the Nairobi securities exchange for the period 2012 to 2013 and used document analysis to collect secondary data from the company’s annual report. Data were analysed through the use of descriptive statistics and inferential statistics methods. Results: The study findings indicated that debt levels (β1 = 0.5422, ρ 0.05) have an insignificant effect. On the other hand, firm age has a significant moderating effect on the relationship between determinants and trade credit. In particular, firm’s age has significant interaction effect on debt level (β6 = -2.3609, p < 0.05), the interaction effects on liquidity (β8 = -2.4649, p < 0.05). Unique Contribution to Theory, Practice and Theory: Firms need to establish a well-defined trade-credit granting criteria to assess the creditworthiness of the buyers to avoid default risk or late payment by buyers. Firms should be cautious while pledging an asset as collateral since the bank has exclusive access to pertinent information. Also, firms should hold liquid assets to meet their financial obligations. There is also a need for firms to transform the raw material supplied into finished goods so that suppliers’ advantage in repossessing and selling supplied goods is reduced. The study also contributes to credit substitution theory by indicating the possibility of using internal equity or external debt financing that cannot be undervalued in the market.

Practically, two-level trade credit is usually applied to stimulate the retailer’s order incentive for deteriorating items with expiration date. Nevertheless, previous studies ignore to identify bo...

In this work, the authors proposes the modified Banu and Mondal’s model for obtaining the optimal process mean, quality investment, replenishment cycle time, and trade credit period. Assume that th...

This study investigates the interaction between suppliers and fraudulent customer firms from the perspective of reputation damage and reputation recovery. Specifically, reputation damage from the regulatory penalty for corporate fraud induces the trust crisis and suppliers respond to fraudulent firms by reducing the trade credit supply. To repair a damaged reputation and rebuild the trust, fraudulent firms raise the ratio of prepayment to purchase volume when purchasing from small suppliers and increase the proportion of purchase from large suppliers in the next year. Channel analysis shows that the declining trust is one of potential mechanisms to reduce the trade credit. Furthermore, the negative effect is more pronounced for fraudulent firms with non-related party suppliers, higher supplier concentration, less analyst coverage, and for fraudulent firms located in regions with less-developed financial environment. Additionally, supplier sanctions have a spillover effect on non-fraudulent customer firms in the same industry. The conclusions are robust to a series of checks, including PSM–DiD, firm and year fixed effect, the alternative measure for trade credit financing, the industry-year fixed effect and the consideration of the monetary policy and financial crisis.

Growing inventory is the set of commodities whose level enhances during the stocking period. This kind of product is normally seen in the poultry industry and livestock farming. In this model, the live newborn is considered to be the initial inventory of the retailer. These are procured and fed until they grow to an ideal weight during the breeding period. Afterward, these are slaughtered and converted to deteriorating items prone to the customer's demand during the consumption period. The poultry industry is responsible for greenhouse gas emissions during feeding, farming, slaughtering, and handling. Consequently, the retailers are enforced to make efforts to reduce the emission which also affects the inventory demeanor. Therefore, the effect of the carbon emissions from the poultry industry has been investigated here. Generally, customers prefer food over the preserved items so shortages are permitted which has been assumed here with partial backlogging. The study has been carried out to investigate the optimum breeding period and optimum livestock inventory. A numerical example and illustrations validate the analytical results. Lastly, a sensitivity analysis has been provided concerning some key parameters.

Purpose: This paper analyzes the impact that human capital has on trade credit in Pakistan's chemical sector. Human capital is a component of intellectual capital. Methodology: HC or Human Capital is taken as an independent variable. The dependent variable is trade credit. Trade credit has two types: Trade Credit Used (TCU) and trade credit extended (TCE). Other variables are also used, such as profitability (PROF), short-term bank credit (SBC), financial leverage (LEV). For empirical investigation, balanced panel data is used for the time 2010 to 2019. For obtaining econometric outcomes, we applied the static panel in E-views. Main Findings: The results indicate that short-term bank credit, leverage, and the interaction term of human capital and profitability create a positive impact with the used trade credit and TCE, while the impact of profitability and human credit on trade credit used is negative. Trade credit extended profitability is moderating the relationship of human capital and trade credit. Implications/Applications: This study has great importance for firm managers, policymakers, investors, academicians, and scholars in the selected sector of Pakistan. Novelty/Originality of this study: The study recommends the efficient, effective utilization of human capital and trade credit to gain a comparative advantage.

Sustainable inventory management is a common issue for any industry. This proposed study explains a representation of mathematical modelling for maintaining sustainability through the preservation technology for deteriorating products and trade-credit strategy for sustainable marketing. Based on the actual life circumstances, it is found that the demand for deteriorated products is influenced by the increasing frequency of advertising and preservation technology. The foremost aim of this study is to maintain sustainability with optimal pricing and optimal strategies to invest in preservation technology and optimal cycle length to take full advantage of the total profit. For solving the model, a classical optimization technique is utilized, and some theoretical results are shown with a graph of the profit function. Couples of experiments compare the proposed results and the existing literature and give some outcomes for different deterioration types. To illustrate and justify the model, a sensitivity analysis conceded for demonstrating the proposed model’s flexibility by changing one parameter while keeping others fixed. The result shows that the trade-credit strategy under the preservation technology makes the management’s most substantial marketing benefit.

This study investigates the overlooked area of growing items through a two-echelon supply chain with a hybrid-price-stock-dependent demand under trade credit policy. A supplier–retailer scenario is studied where the supplier breeds newborn animals with respect to a biological growth pattern and then slaughters them. The items are sent to the retailer where experiencing deterioration during the inventory cycle. The demand in the retail end is assumed to be multivariate function of unit selling price and the level of on-hand inventory. The model is analyzed under decentralized and centralized chain structures. An analytic solution approach and an algorithm are developed to solve the problem. The proposed structure is illustrated through experimental results with factual growth patent. Sensitivity analysis and graphical illustrations are carried out to investigate the impact of different input parameters. The results support the claim that centralized chain structure can provide the partners with more benefits if an appropriate coordination mechanism is applied. Moreover, it is shown that the unit purchasing cost of each echelon has a significant effect on the profit in comparison with the other cost factors. Finally, the results reveal that the supplier’s inventory cycle is more dependent on the growth pattern rather than external cost factors which is the basic insight of this study.

Research background: Poland is a significant recipient of intercompany loans as a part of foreign direct investment (FDI) debt instruments reported in the Balance of Payments. Most of them come from the developed West European countries ? Netherlands, Luxembourg, France, Germany, and Belgium. Igan et al. (2020) confirm debt-based FDI inflows to emerging markets had a higher impact on the industries? growth in the pre-crisis period 1998?2007 than after (till 2010). Purpose of the article: We aim to identify withholding tax (WHT) impact on intercorporate loans inflow to Poland and analyse the relationship between trade credit and intercompany loans to assess the importance of the profit-shifting role of FDI after 2010. Methods: To reflect the impact of withholding tax and trade credit on inter-company loans (inward debt-based FDI) in 2011?2017 to Poland, we use Arellano-Bond and random effects panel model estimators. The estimated specification is derived from the knowledge-capital model and includes two types of capital: human and physical. Findings & value added: We show that WHT on interests reduces profit-shifting by multinational companies? intercompany lending to Poland. But intercompany loans are positively related to foreign trade credit. Unlike in the case of total FDI inward to Poland (Cieślik, 2019), we identified that vertically integrated multinational enterprises are more likely to provide loans to Polish firms. This study is the first to confirm that withholding tax of interests reduces international profit-shifting by FDI and to provide evidence on the relation-ship between foreign trade credit and intercompany loans provided by multi-national companies.

This article analyses, Economic Order Quantity (EOQ) based inventory model for non-instantaneous deteriorating items with inflation under permissible delay in payment. Demand is a linear decreasing...

Utilizing carbon emission regulations helps firms to develop a sustainable supply chain. In a two-echelon supplier-retailer-customer relationship, offering a trade credit period can manage the inventory level. However, there will be a risk of settling the accounts during the trade credit period. Therefore, a portion of purchasing cost is charged as prepayment to mitigate some risk of payment delays. Moreover, obtaining the optimal price for perishable items with expiration dates has become a challenge because of their perishing process. Despite the importance of these challenges, very few papers have concentrated on sustainability considerations for perishable items. Also, the contribution of these issues to the credit risk buyers has never been studied. To address the mentioned gap in the literature, this elaboration investigates a supplier-retailer-customer economic order quantity model for perishable items when two levels of partial delay in payment are permissible and a carbon cap and tax policy is regulated to mitigate the impact of emissions on the two-echelon supply chain. The developed model is applicable in food industries to outline the challenges associated with deterioration, payments, and carbon emissions. This paper determines the optimal replenishment and selling price taking into account the following: (a) perishable items have their specific expiration dates, (b) a prepayment is charged from the buyer when offering a permissible delay in payment, (c) a carbon cap and tax policy is applied to approach the sustainability. Necessary and sufficient conditions of optimality are provided as the solution approach. A case study is presented, and numerical examples and sensitivity analyses are illustrated for validation. Finally, managerial applications are exposed, and results are concluded using future research insights.

The aim of this article is to identify the most important factors influencing the use of trade credit and to assess their significance for Polish listed companies taking into consideration the role of trade credit as a source of financing. Theoretical and empirical literature does not provide clear guidance regarding factors influencing the use of trade credit. In this study the linear regression model with fixed effects for years is used to describe trade credit use in listed Polish companies in the period 2002–2018. The findings show that the following factors have the most pronounced influence on the use of trade credit: trade payables in the previous period, trade receivables, long-term debt, liquidity and short-term debt. Both long-term and short-term debt financing and trade payables are substitutes for Polish listed companies. Lower liquidity and higher trade receivables are related to a higher use of trade credit.

In this article, an imperfect production inventory model consisting of a manufacturer and a retailer with quality improvement effort and the promotional effort sensitive demand pattern is investigated under a two-tier credit policy. We study the model for deteriorating items where the deterioration occurs at different rates in the manufacturer’s and the retailer’s level considering a fixed lifetime of the product. Discussing the six possible cases of credit policy analytically, we analyze the behavior of the model under an integrated system concerning production lot-size, quality effort and promotional effort such that the integrated average profit is maximum. To obtain the optimal solutions of the model, we design an operative solution algorithm. A numerical example is provided to test feasibility of the model, and the effect of the variation of the key parameters is also studied. The outcomes of this proposed model show that the manufacturer and the retailer have to be more careful about their offered credit periods in aspect of the profit. It is observed that the integrated profit is maximum when both credit periods provided by the manufacturer and the retailer belong to the manufacturer’s cycle. Moreover, we identify that the extended product lifetime does not meet with higher profit all times. This study directs that quality effort and promotional effort stimulate the market demand while it is not always economically profitable for the supply chain.

This study investigates an inventory model interfaced with finance, marketing, and operations in a supplier-retailer-customer chain by incorporating some relevant and essential facts. The demand pattern is a multiplicative form of the retailer's selling price and credit period. The retailer receives an upstream advance-cash-credit payment plan from the supplier while offering a downstream cash-credit payment to customers. From the retailer's perspective, offering a longer credit period to customers results in more sales volume but a higher default risk than a shorter one. The retailer's objective is to determine the optimal credit period, selling price, and replenishment time simultaneously to maximize total profit. We develop the model to fit in a general framework that includes various payment types (such as advance, cash, credit, advance-cash, advance-credit, and cash-credit) and numerous previous models as special cases. We derive explicit closed-form solutions to optimal selling price, credit period, and cycle time for five possible cases. We then establish several theoretical results and identify which case is optimal under certain conditions. The purpose of this study is to explore pricing, crediting, and lot-sizing strategies under various payment types – advance, cash, and credit. Finally, we use the analysis numerically to investigate the impact of different payment schemes on the retailer profitability.

In this paper, we build an inventory model for deteriorating items with expiration time which incorporates both quantity and quality losses under two-level trade credit. The demand is dynamic and varies simultaneously with the length of credit period offered to customers and product freshness condition. In addition, the risk of default increases with the credit period length. First, we investigate the retailer’s inventory system for deteriorating items as a profit maximization problem to determine the optimal inventory policies. In order to obtain the optimal ordering policies, we propose some lemmas to help the retailer in accurately and quickly determine the optimal replenishment decisions under maximizing the annual total profit. Finally, we have used some numerical examples to illustrate the proposed models and study the sensitivity analysis on the optimal solution with respect to each parameter and provide some managerial insights.

Trade credit insurance (TCI) is a risk management tool commonly used by suppliers to guarantee against payment default by credit buyers. TCI contracts can be either cancelable (the insurer has the discretion to cancel this guarantee during the insured period) or noncancelable (the terms cannot be renegotiated within the insured period). This paper identifies two roles of TCI: the (cash flow) smoothing role (smoothing the supplier’s cash flows) and the monitoring role (tracking the buyer’s continued creditworthiness after contracting, which enables the supplier to make efficient operational decisions regarding whether to ship goods to the credit buyer). We further explore which contracts better facilitate these two roles of TCI by modeling the strategic interaction between the insurer and the supplier. Noncancelable contracts rely on the deductible to implement both roles, which may result in a conflict: a high deductible inhibits the smoothing role, whereas a low deductible weakens the monitoring role. Under cancelable contracts, the insurer’s cancelation action ensures that the information acquired is reflected in the supplier’s shipping decision. Thus, the insurer has adequate incentives to perform its monitoring function without resorting to a high deductible. Despite this advantage, we find that the insurer may exercise the cancelation option too aggressively; this thereby restores a preference for noncancelable contracts, especially when the supplier’s outside option is unattractive and the insurer’s monitoring cost is low. Noncancelable contracts are also relatively more attractive when the acquired information is verifiable than when it is unverifiable. This paper was accepted by Vishal Gaur, operations management.

International audience; The purpose of this article is to examine the impact of the working capital in the borrowing decision of a retailer. The proposed analysis is based on a model with a retailer, a supplier and a bank in a non-cooperative game with price-sensitive demand. The retailer, the supplier and the bank (if concerned) determine, respectively, the ordering quantity, the wholesale price and the interest rate. A Stackelberg game-theoretic approach is employed where the retailer is a follower and either the supplier or the bank is the leader. Some structural properties are first derived from the mathematical models. Then, some numerical simulations show that: (i) a trade credit guarantees the same profits for the retailer and the supplier as in the case where the retailer has sufficient cash holdings, (ii) there exist some situations where the retailer has a better profit with a borrow than with sufficient cash holdings, and (iii) borrowing decision depends on both retailer's and supplier's discount rate and the retailer's cash holdings.

We study the impacts of the use of trade credit on SME financial performance and operational distress in a sample of 74,036 SMEs across 19 EU countries between 2006 to 2015. Under the premise that trade credit acts as a substitute for bank credit, our results show that supplying trade credit improves profitability, but we show little evidence that such an investment is more profitable for bank credit richer SMEs, although such firms did redistribute more bank fund through trade credit to their customers. For receivers, we show that the use of trade credit finance alleviates operational distress, especially for those SMEs facing liquidity constraints, such as those which have less access to bank credit or under credit tightened periods. This distress reduction effect is also reflected in their profitability indicators. However, the longer the average collection period and credit period, the less effective the trade credit effects respectively on improving SME profitability and reducing operational distress.

Although high and advanced technologies are used by the industry to produce high-quality items, few defective items have been produced due to some errors in the technical operation or in maintenance. The defective cost is the expense involving rework, repair, and replacement of defective items and the cost incurred due to loss of goods. The learning function acts as a substantial function for cost diminution. Meanwhile, the impact of learning is an incident that occurs approximately everywhere and enables the workers to carry out new work with better performance after owing repetition over a course of time. Further, a retailer offers buyers an allowable setback time to arrange the money payable to him and no extra fine to a buyer if money is paid within the allowable financing time period. On the other hand, if the cash is not paid on trade-credit financing period of time, the retailer will charge on remaining cash provided by the buyer after the allowed period. Keeping these facts, an inventory model has been developed for imperfect quality items with a learning effect in which demand rate assumes as an exponential function of the trade credit period. The expected total prot function is maximized with respect to trade credit financing period under learning effect. A numerical example is illustrated, and comprehensive sensitivity analysis has also been depicted to understand the robustness of the model.

Considering the deferred and risk-free interest rates, this paper focuses on the impact of fairness concern on optimal strategies about pricing, green levels and sales effort in manufacturer-led green supply chain. The results show that in the scenario with fairness neutral, the optimal benefit under decentralized decision is always less than the centralized decision, and the risk-free interest rate is larger, the difference between the two is more obvious. While in the scenario with fairness concern, the fairness degree, product greening efficiency and the return on sales work together on the greenness, sales efforts and pricing decision of the product under the condition that the Nash-negotiation solution is used as a fair reference point. Although fairness concern behavior always achieves utility fairness by harming the other party’s revenue, the overall utility of the supply chain will grow to some extent under the manufacturer’s fairness-concern behavior, which is in stark contrast to the impact of retailer’s fairness concern.

It is well-known that the production-inventory problem for deteriorating items in the supply chain is a challenge at the time to decide on how many products to manufacture with the aim of obtaining a maximum total prot. This research work develops an economic production quantity model for a deteriorating item under partial trade credit policy considering the inflation, the effect of the reliability factor of the production system, and that the demand depends on the price of the product where the selling price is optimized. The production-inventory model is formulated as a nonlinearly constrained optimization problem by analyzing different cases. Finally, through a numerical example, a sensitivity analysis is performed with the aim of studying the effect of different parameters; changing one of them at a time and keeping the others fixed at their original values.

We demonstrate that the “predator-prey” metaphor may be well-suited to describe trade finance mechanisms in emerging economies. Having analyzed the dynamics of trade credit in the Polish corporate sector over the period between 1997 and 2014, we found that suppliers of trade credit were smaller, younger, less liquid, less indebted, and more financially constrained than the beneficiaries thereof. The firms, which increased trade receivables during the analyzed period, improved their asset turnover ratio at the expense of operating profitability. In a quest for growth and cash flows, these firms appear to be forced to supply trade credit to their counterparties with a stronger bargaining position. Companies, which reported higher trade payables, enjoy higher cash flows and a better access to external financing, yet with no improvements to the operating KPIs. In contrast to the conventional wisdom, we hypothesize that trade credit bargaining may be a negative-sum game.

This paper develops a powerful retailer inventory model under trade credit and quantity discounts in which the retailer’s order quantity is calculated for each setup and shipped in equal lots over multiple deliveries. Furthermore, the trade credit condition is that the retailer must make partial payments in cash for a given number of sub-shipments, with the remaining balance paid in trade credit time that expires after the inventory is depleted. This integrated powerful retailer supply chain model has not yet been discussed in previous supply chain coordination systems literature. We propose an annual total cost function and properties and develop theorems to illustrate that a unique optimal solution minimizes the relevant cost per year. We also develop an efficient algorithm to determine the optimal set of the replenishment time and the number of shipments. Numerical examples are provided to demonstrate the proposed model and algorithm. A sensitivity analysis is explored to examine the effects of four important parameters (i.e., setup cost, unit holding cost, interest rate, and receiving cost) on the optimal strategy. Finally, managerial insights are drawn.

Though it is an important means for enterprises to increase market demand and boost profits, trade credit can carry risks. Besides, risks also result from uncertain market demand. Decision-makers’ attitude towards risk will influence the decisions of enterprises, so it is meaningful to study the impact of risk preference on supply chain performance. This paper explores the effect of risk-averse preferences of the manufacturer or retailer on their delayed payment periods decision and utility when the dual-channel structure is adopted. Customer demands are uncertain and depend on the delayed payment periods that the manufacturer and the retailer may offer to them. Mean-variance model is used to describe the risks due to uncertain demand, and establishes supply chain utility models under four decision-making situations (both are risk-neutral; only the retailer is risk-averse; only the manufacturer is risk-averse; both are risk-averse). According to our study, supply chain members with higher risk aversion are more inclined to prolong delayed payment period. The retailers risk aversion is adverse for her utility, but beneficial to the manufacturers utility, thus a new coordination mechanism is proposed to achieve coordinate when only the retailer is risk averse. We prove that the contract can effectively improve the utility of the whole supply chain. This paper conduces to enrich the emerging literature on relating risk aversion preferences to trade credit period decision and coordination behavior under dual-channel environment.

Firms in the US economy are closely interconnected in a production network and are subject to shocks that propagate within the network. This study examines the liquidity management of firms centrally connected in the network. I show that, while central firms are more exposed to aggregate swings, they maintain higher cash holdings to protect themselves and connected firms against such exposure. Central firms’ cash holding motives are alleviated by firm diversification but are aggravated by industry competition. Such motives are not explained by alternative determinants of cash policies. My findings suggest that systematically important firms proactively dampen the propagation of shocks in the production network.

We investigate the systemic importance of U.S. non-financial corporations and analyse the firm-specific characteristics that identify systemically important non-financial firms. We compute two firm-specific measures of systemic risk for 1145 non-financial corporations and confirm that these firms are both vulnerable to systemic shocks and contribute to system-wide risk, though firms that are high in one dimension of risk are not necessarily high in the other. Systemic risk measures exhibit substantial variation across firms and over time. The firm's beta, value-at-risk, size, debt and trade credit are related to both dimensions of systemic risk, while a range of other firm characteristics are associated with systemic risk in at least one direction. The differences between the dimensions of risk and their associated characteristics underline the importance of analysing both measures of risk.

In-transit inventory financing is gaining popularity as an alternative way to access financing. However, compared with other financing means such as trade credit and bank loans, the effects on the supply chain of a third-party logistics provider (TPL) providing in-transit inventory financing are seldom investigated. This study adopts a channel competition model to examine the impact of such financing on the supply chain. Through comparative analysis with conventional financing approaches, we find that the availability of in-transit inventory financing allows retailers to take advantage of a lower financing fee for trade credit, even when the demand for trade credit decreases. In addition, the TPL-provided financing service can lead to a reduction in financing fee for both trade credit and in-transit inventory financing when both the supplier and retailers have financing demand or the TPL is subject to a high degree of risk aversion. Finally, when the TPL has the first-mover advantage in setting its financing fee, the supplier with a financing demand pays a lower financing fee to the TPL due to the decreased demand for in-transit inventory financing. In this case, we find that the low logistics cost, the low unit product price without trade credit and a high financing ratio can make in-transit inventory financing more attractive than trade credit. Our results have important implications for the implementation of in-transit inventory financing in supply chains.

In obedience with the economic order quantity model, the ordered lot has 100% good quality items, but this is only suppositional. On examination, it is learnt that some of the produced lots have defective items because of process retrogression and other such factors. Thus, in this situation, the inspection of lots is essential for all organizations when the items are deteriorating in nature. Owing to this fact, an inventory model is proposed for deteriorating items with in-process inspection with learning effect under permissible delay in the payments. The aim of this paper is to study the impact of learning on the ordered quantity under the influence of trade-credit financing. Finally, the expected total profit function is maximized with respect to order quantity under credit financing. This paper, which is an extension of Patro et al. (Int J Manag Decis Mak 17(2): 171–198, 2018) commendable work, makes significant use of permissible delay in payment and proposed an inventory model for deteriorating imperfect quality items with learning effect. A numerical example given ahead shows the verification of results. Results suggest that impact of trade-credit policy is positive on the proposed inventory model. The effect of key parameters on the model is studied by sensitivity analysis to deduce managerial insights.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to verify whether the benefits gained by granting extended payment terms can lead to higher profitability for Italian companies. Moreover, the analysis aims to investigate whether trade credit offered at a higher level than the sector average can contribute to the profitability of companies. Finally, it aims to test whether the profitability connected to granting trade credit is higher for the unconstrained and financially sound companies.Design/methodology/approachThe empirical analyses are conducted on a sample of Italian firms, over the period 2008–2016. The methodologies used to test research hypotheses are panel analysis with fixed effects and random effects models, as well as the generalized method of moment (GMM).FindingsThe results show the contribution of trade credit to the profitability of Italian companies. The empirical analysis also suggests that companies might improve their profitability by increasing investments in trade receivables to a greater extent than companies in their business sector. Finally, the greater use of payables to suppliers and the higher incidence of bank debt reduce the contribution of accounts receivable to the profitability of companies.Originality/valueThis study contributes to the existing literature as very few studies have analyzed whether trade credit offered at a higher level than the sector average may contribute to the profitability of companies. Moreover, the study provides new evidence on the moderation effect of payables to banks and suppliers on the contribution of granting trade credit to company performance.

The present study presents a fuzzy inventory model for non-instantaneous deteriorating items under conditions of permissible delay in payments. In the current paper, we incorporate the condition in which, the supplier accepts the partial payment at the end of the credit period and the reaming amount after that period under the term and condition. Here, the demand rate is a function of the selling price. Also, it is assumed that shortages are allowed and are fully backlogged. The present paper also considers that the interest earned (IE) on the fixed deposit amount, i.e., revenue generated by fulfilling the shortage, balance amount, after settling the account is higher than that of usual interest rate (Ie). Hence, the objective of this study is to determine the retailer’s optimal policies that maximize the total profit. Also, some theoretical results are obtained, which shows that the optimal solution not only exists, it is unique also. The impact of the new proposed credit policy is investigated on the optimality of the solution for the non-instantaneous deteriorating products. The validation of the proposed model and its solution method is demonstrated through the numerical example. The results indicate that the inventory model, along with the solution method, provides a powerful tool to the retail managers under real-world situations. Results demonstrate that it is essential for the managers to consider the inclusion of new proposed credit policy significantly increases the net annual profit.

In this study one obtained the optimal decision of a retailer for the replenishment rate with selling-price and credit-period dependent demand to maximize the profit. A time-varying deterioration rate was considered for those products. A credit-period was offered by the retailer to the end customer to settle the whole payments. The aim of the model was to obtain the maximum profit for the retailer based model. A solution methodology with an algorithm was used to obtain the global optimum profit. An illustrative numerical example was given to test the practical applicability of the model. Numerical study indicated that the profit was at a maximum when the permissible delay-period for payment offered by the suppliers was lies between the permissible delay-time, and the cycle time, offered by the retailer.

By using a pilot license as a proxy for the sensation-seeking personality trait, we examine the relation between sensation-seeking CEOs and trade credit. With a sample of pilot CEOs and non-pilot C...

This paper investigates the relationship between Cash In Advance (CIA) and firms’ export participation, particularly in the presence of financial constraints. Using the firm-level data covering 56 countries for the period from 2006 to 2010, we detect the positive correlation of the employment of CIA and the export participation of small and medium-sized firms only. This correlation becomes more prominent for severely credit-constrained firms. One possible explanation is that CIA raises the export possibility of small and medium-sized firms by ameliorating credit constraints while it plays no role in large-sized ones.

In this work, we propose a stochastic inventory model under the situations that delay in imbursement is acceptable. Most of the inventory model on this topic supposed that the supplier would offer the retailer a fixed delay period and the retailer could sell the goods and accumulate revenue and earn interest with in the credit period. They also assumed that the trade credit period is independent of the order quantity. Limited investigators developed EOQ model under permissible delay in payments, where trade credit is connected with the order quantity. When the order quantity is a lesser amount of the quantity at which the delay in payment is not permitted, the payments for the items must be made immediately. Otherwise, the fixed credit period is permitted. However, all these models were completely deterministic in nature. In reality, this trade credit period cannot be fixed. If it is fixed, then retailer will not be interested to buy higher quantity than the fixed quantity at which delay in payment is permitted. To reflect this situation, we assumed that trade credit period is not static but fluctuates with the ordering quantity. The demand throughout any arrangement period follows a probability distribution. We have calculated the total variable cost for every unit of time. The optimum ordering policy of the scheme can be found with the aid of three theorems (proofs are provided). An algorithm to determine the best ordering rule with the assistance of the propositions is established and numerical instances are provided for clarification. Sensitivity investigation of all the parameters of the model is presented and deliberated. Some previously published results are special cases of the consequences gotten in this paper.

We study the impact ofQuickpay, a federal reform that indefinitely acceleratedpayments to small business contractors of the U.S. government. We find a strong di-rect effect of the reform on employment growth at the firm-level. Importantly, how-ever, we also document substantial crowding out of non-treated firms’ employmentwithin local labor markets. While the overall net employment effect was positive,it was close to zero in tight labor markets – where crowding out was stronger. Ourresults highlight an important channel for alleviating financing constraints in smallfirms, but also emphasize the general-equilibrium effects of large-scale interventions,which can lead to lower aggregate outcomes depending on labor market conditions.

High supplier concentration (SC) of a firm can weaken the firm’s bargaining power, which reduces its profitability and internal funds. Also, high SC likely increases the firm’s exposure to supply shocks, which results in high costs of external financing. Consequently, high-SC firms will incline to hold more cash due to the precautionary concern. However, there is little research into the effect of SC on cash holdings. This paper investigates how SC affects cash holdings with Chinese firms over 2009–2016. We find that a firm’s cash holding increases with its SC. Further investigations show that this positive relation stems from the unfavorable impact of SC on trade credit and equity financing. Our results are robust to different tests including the instrumental variable approach and the propensity score matching. Our findings are new to the literature and help to explain the cash holding puzzle. Our study also indicates that choosing supplier concentration adequately is important in maintaining a firm’s financial health.

An economic downturn can occurred through unexpected events in various fields, such as the subprime mortgage crisis and the outbreak of Coronavirus Disease-2019 (COVID-19). Trade credit is important for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), especially during a monetary contraction, as it is the last option for firms that lack bank credit. This study aims to determine whether trade credit is profitable for the buyer and supplier firms during and after a financial crisis. We use panel data consisting of all trade credit transactions and financial statements of 5,751 Korean firms during the period 2008–2012. It shows that trade credit is more profitable for both buyers and suppliers in the post-crisis period than during the crisis. Moreover, trade payable is more effective for unconstrained buyers than for constrained buyers. Finally, a mixed strategy is superior to an aggressive or passive strategy of SMEs. The results suggest less profitability of trade credit during a period of contraction and greater sensitivity of the buyer SMEs, emphasizing the idiosyncratic liquidity strategy of each firm. This study can be helpful to develop a strategy of profitable trade credit for SMEs and to establish a policy of managing liquidity for the authority.

We analyse the macroeconomic effects of exogenous contractions in bank lending to non-financial corporations in the Euro Area, Germany, France, Italy and Spain using a Bayesian vector autoregressive model with endogenous hyperparameter selection and identification via sign restrictions. We focus on the behaviour of firms' external financing sources alternative to bank loans, such as financing via equity, debt securities, trade credit and lending from non-banks. We investigate whether these alternative financing sources are complements to or substitutes for bank lending using the joint posterior distribution of their impulse responses with that of bank loans. For the Euro Area our results show equity, debt securities and non-bank loans to be substitutes for bank loans with negative responses to a positive loan supply shock while trade credit is a complement and responds positively. We show that the substitution relationship with respect to bank loans is more clearly visible in the joint distribution of the financing sources reactions than when focusing only on the marginal impulse responses. Quantitatively, the developments in bank loans and trade credit dominate the response of the overall sum of the external financing. This result also holds in most cases at the country level. However, whether and which of the alternative financing sources are substitutes for or complements to bank loans differs across countries.