Trade credit as an alternative to bank credit during the financial crisis

Abstract

This paper examines the trade credit behavior of a sample of Dutch small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) before and after the recent financial crisis. We analyze a relatively large dataset of 368 firms over the period of 2003-2012. Our findings suggest that trade payables decreased significantly during the crisis. SMEs also did not extend trade credit during the financial crisis. These findings confirm the negative effect of financial crisis on SMEs. We also investigate the substitution and redistribution roles of trade credit and find that during the financial crisis SMEs replaced the reduced bank finance with trade credit. However, SMEs were reluctant to provide trade credit even when they have higher bank finance