The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in an extremely rare instance of a shock to global product markets. Using quarterly data for a sample of 7397 firms from 54 countries over the period 2017–2020, we study the causal impact of this shock on trade credit. Employing a difference-in-difference analysis, we find that, in contrast to findings in the literature on financial market shocks, low-credit quality firms are credit-rationed by their suppliers during a shock to product markets and that for low-credit quality firms, there is no substitution of trade credit with financial credit. Importantly, however, our analysis shows that low-credit quality firms with better stakeholder relations are able to obtain more trade credit than those with weaker stakeholder relations. Our results are robust to alternative definitions of key variables, alternative methodologies that address endogeneity concerns, a placebo test, stage of market development, and various levels of controls for unobserved heterogeneity. We show that trade credit is conditional on product market conditions and is not always a generous substitute for financial credit. However, maintaining good relations with stakeholders serves as an antidote to the adverse effect of product market shocks on trade credit.

中文翻译：

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产品市场冲击、利益相关者关系和贸易信贷


COVID-19 大流行对全球产品市场造成了极其罕见的冲击。我们使用 2017 年至 2020 年期间来自 54 个国家的 7397 家公司的季度数据，研究了这种冲击对贸易信贷的因果影响。采用双重差分分析，我们发现，与金融市场冲击文献中的研究结果相反，低信用质量企业在产品市场冲击期间由其供应商进行信用配给，而低信用质量企业则在产品市场受到冲击时由其供应商进行信用配给。对于企业而言，金融信贷无法替代贸易信贷。然而，重要的是，我们的分析表明，与利益相关者关系较好的低信用质量企业相比，利益相关者关系较弱的企业能够获得更多的贸易信贷。我们的结果对于关键变量的替代定义、解决内生性问题的替代方法、安慰剂测试、市场发展阶段以及对未观察到的异质性的各种控制水平来说是稳健的。我们表明，贸易信贷取决于产品市场条件，并不总是金融信贷的慷慨替代品。然而，与利益相关者保持良好关系可以作为产品市场冲击对贸易信贷不利影响的解药。