Il credito commerciale in Italia: evidenza su dati d’impresa

Interfirm late payments are a hot issue in the EU as witnessed by the 1998 bills passed in Italy andin the U.K. and by the soon to be approved EU Directive. Comprehensive information, especiallyon the effective own cost, is however almost absent in the literature. The paper provides the firstdetailed evidence of the trade debt own cost for the Italian manufacturing firms, arising out ofdiscounts offered and of penalties for late payments. It is shown that, comparing also self-definedbank lending rationed and non rationed firms, interfirm credit received is, if ever, only slightly moreexpensive than bank credit. Cross-section econometric analysis, besides establishing the greaterreactivity of credit received rather granted to the external funds implicit cost, finds that the discountoffered for early payments affects significantly credit granted to buyers. The estimates obtained forthe basic specifications are robust when the sample is split according to various criteria; largerfirms, probably because less financially constrained, react more strongly to sales reductions vialonger credit and debt periods.