Niklas Amberg (Sveriges Riksbank); Tore Ellingsen (Stockholm School of Economics); Tor Jacobson (Sveriges Riksbank); Erik von Schedvin (Swedish Debt Office)
Abstract
Why do virtually all firms - even the wealthiest - borrow from their suppliers? And why do financially constrained firms borrow substantially more? Data comprising 21 million invoices from 46 suppliers to 126,000 different corporate customers reveal that contracted trade credit duration is independent of the customer's creditworthiness, and that overdue payments only account for a sixth of the variance in customers' trade debt. In other words, financially constrained buyers primarily purchase more inputs. We therefore hypothesize that financially constrained firms choose "buying" over "making" to increase their overall funding. As predicted, firms' labor share is increasing in their credit rating, and within-industry purchases respond more strongly to financial constraints than do between-industry purchases.