Credit risk, trade credit and finance: evidence from Taiwanese manufacturing firms

Trade credit does not use collateral and the hard-to-enforce contracts depend on trust and reputation. Taiwan is a small open economy and suffers more information asymmetry problems than a country with more domestic trade. Exploring this situation, this paper collects data for Taiwanese traded manufacturing firms and links this to the credit-risk index, called the TCRI, to test whether a firm's trade credit will decrease following an increase in its credit-risk index after controlling other factors. The main findings are as follows. First, TCRI adversely affects trade credit, measured as accounts payable relative to short-term debt, and the effect is larger for the small firms. Second, short-term bank loans relative to short-term debt increase with credit risk. Taiwanese banks offer more short-term credit to traded firms who experience a deterioration in their TCRI rating, a higher issuing cost of commercial paper and less access to trade credit.