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Trade credit is an important business-to-business marketing tool for building firms’ competitive advantage. Many studies explore the determinants of trade credits from a trust-based view, but the role of political connections is largely overlooked, despite their potential influence in assessing firms’ trustworthiness in the context of emerging economies. This study aims to fill this gap by examining how political connections affect the capacity of emerging economy firms (EEFs) to grant and receive trade credit.

This study tests a conceptual model using secondary data collected from 1,149 Chinese privately owned listed manufacturing firms between 2008 and 2016.

This study finds that political connections reduce EEFs’ accounts receivable and payable; their philanthropic activities alleviate this negative effect for accounts payable, while patent applications reduce it for accounts receivable. These findings suggest the effect of political connections can spillover to EEFs’ relationship with their up- and down-stream partners.

This study has implications EEF managers, particularly in pointing to the detrimental effect of political connections on relationships with buyers and suppliers, and highlights the need to adopt suitable approaches to offset this effect.

This study sheds new light on the negative effect of political connections on EEFs’ capacity to grant and receive trade credit in their exchanges with up-stream and down-stream partners. It enriches the trust-based view of trade credit by revealing the significant influence of EEFs’ political connections, while also advancing a contingency view by testing the moderating role of corporate philanthropic activities and patent applications.

This study aims to examine the influence of stock liquidity on the trade credit of publicly listed companies in Saudi Arabia.

In this study various econometric models were used to test the data of 900 firms listed in Saudi Arabia during the period of 2010–2019.

The robust results of the various econometric models indicate that firms are more willing to offer trade credit to customers when stock liquidity is greater; however, they are less likely to rely on obtaining more payables from suppliers. The findings further indicate that payables and receivables are indeed related, but not exclusively, in the sense that more payables lead to more receivables. The study also reveals a pattern of persistence in payables and receivables during the period of study.

The sample of the present study is only made up of Saudi listed companies. Future research could extend the sample of this study taking into account listed firms in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region as a whole so as to gain more insights from the entire region including oil-producing and non–oil-producing countries. More studies are needed to further examine the impact of alternative options for credit access and their linkage to stock liquidity. Finally the difference in difference (DiD) method of analysis as quasi experimental method can be another extension of this research.

The findings would provide implications for managers and investors by recognizing the potential role of stock liquidity in affecting trade credit and understanding the association between the stock liquidity and trade credit. Management of the firms should look for the ways to enhance the stock liquidity of the firms so as to help in reducing the extreme debts usage and therefore, alternative source of funds can be available accordingly. Once the advantage of stock market is identified, firms' managers should search for chances and policies that can promote stock liquidity and hence make use of the advantages of being liquid.

This paper provides new evidence from the emerging market, particularly the Saudi Arabia. The attempt is one of the first in the region to broaden the knowledge about the effects of stock liquidity on trade credit. It provides market participants with insights on the role of stock liquidity in financial flexibility.

Existing literature demonstrates the important role of information transparency in enterprise development and market surveillance. However, little empirical research has examined the information transparency effect in supply chain management. This study aims to fill this gap by exploring the significant role of information transparency on supply chain financing and its mechanism, taking trade credit as the starting point.

From the data set comprising 3,880 Chinese firms with A-shares listed on the Shenzhen and Shanghai Stock Exchanges from 2011 to 2020, we obtain the basic picture of information transparency and trade credit. Panel fixed effects regression is used to test the hypotheses concerning the antecedents to trade credit.

The empirical results show that: first, information transparency can significantly support corporate access to trade credit and is found to facilitate financing by mitigating perceived risk. Second, among companies with higher levels of financing constraints, weaker market power and more concentration of suppliers, information transparency promotes trade credit more markedly. Third, the outbreak of COVID-19 causes a substantial increase in uncertainty and risk in external circumstances and then the effect of information transparency is weakened. Fourth, the contribution to trade credit is likely to be stronger for disclosures containing management transparency elements compared to single financial transparency.

To the best of our knowledge, this study is one of the first to explore the positive role of information transparency to supply chain financing, which to a certain extent makes up for the lack of information transparency research in the supply chain. It provides new ideas for enterprises to obtain trade credit financing and promote the improvement of supervision departments’ disclosure policies.

This paper takes Chinese A-share listed companies from 2007 to 2021 as research samples to investigate the influence of supplier concentration on debt maturity structure and its mechanism. It further analyzes whether the relationship between the two is different in the case of different monetary policies, collateral assets, and total debt. The research conclusion is of practical significance for enterprises to construct a balanced debt maturity structure and prevent financial risks.

This paper adopts the empirical research method. The data came from the CSMAR database, which eliminated ST and *ST and companies with missing data, resulting in a sample of 20,328. Stata16 was used for statistical analysis.

There is an inverted U-shaped relationship between supplier concentration and debt maturity structure, and market position and trade credit play an intermediary role. In the case of tight monetary policy, fewer collateral assets, and higher total debt, the inverse U-shaped relationship is more significant.

This paper examines the relationship between supplier concentration and debt maturity structure from a non-linear perspective for the first time, providing theoretical support for enterprises to form a reasonable debt structure, and deepening the theoretical cognition of the relationship between supplier concentration and corporate debt maturity structure.

The purpose of this paper is to maximize the average profit of the supply chain by calculating the order quantity, the number of shipments during the production time of the vendor, the number of shipments during the supply cycle of the vendor and the time when the retailer’s inventory level reaches to zero.

A production and inventory model for degrading commodities with stochastic demand and two-level partial trade credit in a supply chain is presented. The model’s applicability and the processes' feasibility for solving are verified by GAMS software with BARON.

The impact of the model’s parameters on the vendor and retailer’s average profit was found through sensitivity analysis. The effect of the model’s parameters on the supply chain’s average profit was also found. Moreover, the reasons for this effect were given.

First, decision-makers may use this model to increase the supply chain's average profit. Second, the proposed model takes a general form. Third, the policymakers can also adjust the model’s parameters according to their preferences to get the desired results.

First, this paper develops an inventory and production model for perishable goods. Second, it is believed that the demand is random because the demand is affected by many factors, which make the study more realistic. Third, this paper studies production and inventory problems from the supply chain perspective. Finally, the interest for partial trade credit is calculated. The interest caused by stochastic shortages is also considered and calculated.

This study aims to explore the potential impact of country-level governance in corporate financing structures.

A two-step system generalized method of moment was used due to the endogeneity issue. The whole sample comprises 3,761 firms in five economies – China, India, Pakistan, Singapore and South Korea – from 2007 to 2016.

The results indicate that the debt option for financing is not favorable under governments with an adequate governance arrangement. However, there is a direct and significant link between country governance and equity financing because in adequate governance arrangements, the possibilities of information asymmetry are minimal and businesses consider equity a more appropriate and safer financing instrument. In contrast, firms prefer to trade-credit financing in poor governance economies, which confirms an adverse link between trade credit and adequate governance.

The country’s governance should be considered a sensitive matter when deciding about corporate financing.

This arrangement of variables has not been previously analyzed in the literature, suggesting the study’s novelty.

This study investigates the significance of trade credit (TC) as an alternative source of funding in financing the growth of financially dependent firms.

Panel data analysis using the difference generalized method of moments (GMM) and fixed-effects ordinary least squares (FE-OLS) is conducted on annual data from publicly listed firms across a number of developing economies. The data cover the period from 2003 to 2019.

The findings indicate that financially dependent firms rely on TC to manage their growth, especially when they have exhausted their debt capacity. This dependence on TC displays a cyclical pattern. As firms enhance their financial position, they tend to scale back their dependence. Nevertheless, firms with significant growth opportunities continue utilizing TC for at least two years after their initial identification as financially dependent.

The author's conclusion highlights that TC can be a valuable and accessible source of funding, especially in developing economies where the real sector may require alternative financing channels. Hence, TC has the potential to play a very significant role in financing corporate growth in these economies.

The current study adds to the existing body of literature by revealing that access to alternative sources of finance is also critical for firms that are dependent on external sources and for firms that have exhausted their financial debt capacity.

Based on signaling theory, this paper aims to explore the impact of supply chain transparency (SCT) on firms' bank loan (BL) and supply chain financing (SCF) in the context of voluntary disclosure of supplier and customer lists.

Based on panel data collected from Chinese-listed firms between 2012 and 2021, fixed-effect models and a series of robustness checks are used to test the predictions.

First, improving SCT by disclosing major suppliers and customers promotes BL but inhibits SCF. Specifically, customer transparency (CT) is more influential in SCF than supplier transparency (ST). Second, supplier concentration (SC) weakens SCT’s positive impact on BL while reducing its negative impact on SCF. Third, customer concentration (CC) strengthens the positive impact of SCT on BL but intensifies its negative impact on SCF. Last, these findings are basically more pronounced in highly competitive industries.

This study contributes to the SCT literature by investigating the under-explored practice of supply chain list disclosure and revealing its dual impact on firms' access to financing offerings (i.e. BL and SCF) based on signaling theory. Additionally, it expands the understanding of the boundary conditions affecting the relationship between SCT and firm financing, focusing on supply chain concentration. Moreover, it advances signaling theory by exploring how financing providers interpret the SCT signal and enriches the understanding of BL and SCF antecedents from a supply chain perspective.

The marginalisation of female entrepreneurs in accessing credit is well documented. Yet, how female entrepreneurs navigate through the marginalisation to gain funding is under-explored.

The authors address this gap using qualitative data from 30 female entrepreneurs in three neighbourhoods with varying socio-economic characteristics in Ghana's capital, Accra.

The authors find a marked aversion to bank loans among respondents. Consequently, they nurtured trust in their social circles in order to facilitate access to informal credit from internal (e.g. family and friends) and external (e.g. trade credit, associations and religious organisations) sources. This aversion to loans from formal financial institutions (FFIs) had a socio-cultural aspect, including cumbersome application procedures, a deep-rooted fear of the social consequences of defaulting and religious prohibition against interest payment for Islamic traders.

This paper shows that providing formal access to credit is not enough to support women's entrepreneurship if the socio-cultural factors inhibiting women's access to credit from FFIs are not addressed.

The findings suggest that trust is an important factor that bridges the gap in female entrepreneurs' access to funding given their heavy reliance on informal sources of funding.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-02-2023-0090

The purpose of this research is to examine Micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs). Which have limited access to financial resources from financial intermediaries. Thus, resource allocation is a primary concern for them.

This research studies the determinants of cash conversion cycle components and cash flow of MSMEs operating in Ecuador. This study examined a robust sample of 19,680 firms from 2000 to 2020, using the two-step generalized methods of moments to control for endogeneity and multicollinearity of independent variables issues.

The sample was divided into working capital intensive and fixed capital intensive firms. It was found that in every segment (micro-, small- and medium-sized), the majority of firms are working capital intensive and their average return is higher. This implies that small business owners assign the majority of their resources to current assets, which thus far have enabled them to achieve higher profitability.

Research investigated Ecuadorian MSMEs in a dollarized developing environment. Scrutinizing working capital intensive vs fixed capital intensive.