ABSTRACT

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 and 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.

摘要

我们在2006年至2015年间的19个欧盟国家/地区的74,036家中小型企业样本中研究了使用贸易信贷对中小型企业财务绩效和经营困境的影响。在以贸易信贷替代银行信贷的前提下，我们的结果表明：提供贸易信贷可以提高获利能力，但是我们几乎没有证据表明，这种投资对银行信贷丰富的中小型企业更有利可图，尽管这类公司确实通过贸易信贷向客户重新分配了更多的银行资金。对于接收方，我们表明，使用贸易信贷融资可以缓解运营压力，特别是对于那些面临流动性限制的中小企业，例如那些难以获得银行信贷或处于信贷紧缩时期的中小企业。这种减少困境的效果也反映在其获利能力指标中。然而，