Trade Credit, Markups, and Relationships

Alvaro Garcia-Marin, Santiago Justel () and Tim Schmidt-Eisenlohr

No 7600, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: Trade credit is the most important form of short-term finance for firms. In 2019, U.S. non-financial firms had about $4.5 trillion in trade credit outstanding equaling 21 percent of U.S. GDP. This paper documents two striking facts about trade credit use. First, firms with higher markups supply more trade credit. Second, trade credit use increases in relationship length, as firms often switch from cash in advance to trade credit but rarely away from trade credit. These two facts can be rationalized in a model where firms learn about their trading partners, sellers charge markups over production costs, and financial intermediation is costly. The model also shows that saving on financial intermediation costs provides a strong rationale for the dominance of trade credit. Using Chilean data at the firm-product-level and the trade-transaction level, we find support for all predictions of the model.

Keywords: trade credit; markups; financial intermediation; learning (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F12 F14 G21 G32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cfn
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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Working Paper: Trade Credit, Markups, and Relationships (2020)
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