Trade Credit Terms Offered by Small Firms: Survey Evidence and Empirical Analysis

Trade credit has been shown to be an important source of short-term finance for smaller firms but small firms are also suppliers of trade credit. There is little empirical evidence on the credit granting decisions of small firms. Previous empirical work (Petersen and Rajan, 1997; and Ng, Smith and Smith, 1999) has focused on credit granting and investment in accounts receivable in larger firms. In this paper we look at the influences on credit granting for the smallest firms, using a sample of firms with an average of 10 employees. As in previous studies we find that product and demand characteristics influence credit terms. Moreover, we find evidence that firm size affects credit extension choices directly by setting limits on the possibilities for economies of scale, but it also impacts indirectly by affecting the firm's access to finance and its bargaining strength vis-à-vis suppliers. The dominant position of larger customers in bargaining with small suppliers constrains the impact of other factors on the firm's choice of credit terms. Small firms are also under pressure to conform to industry norms, although lack of resources can be a limiting factor. Constrained firms may make use of two-part terms in an attempt to improve their cashflow.     

迷人狮城 热带岛国

新加坡古时候被称为“海城”。关于这座“海城”，之所以改称为新加坡，有许多传说。在叙述了马六甲王国繁华历史的《马来年代纪》一书中，有这样一则事故。有一个传说：苏门答腊岛巴邻旁国的王子有一次来到“海城”狩猎。他一连几天在岛上四处走动。一天，突然发现一种奇异的动物，如山羊般大小，头黑而胸白。它看到王子一行人后，立即消失得无影无踪。随从们大叫“狮子”（狮子的马来语发音为“Singa”），王子于是将此岛改名为“Singapore”（Pore为“都市”之意）。     

Decomposing the persistence of international equity flows

The portfolio flows of institutional investors are widely known to be persistent. What is less well-known, however, is the source of this persistence. One possibility is the ‘informed trading hypothesis:’ that persistence arises from autocorrelated trades of individual investors who believe they have information about value and who face an imperfectly liquid market. Another possibility is that there are asynchroneities with respect to investment decisions across funds, across investments, or both. These asynchroneities could be due to wealth effects (across investments for a single fund), investor herding (across funds for a single investment), or generalized contagion (across funds and across investments). We use daily data on institutional flows into 21 developed countries by 471 funds to measure and decompose aggregate flow persistence. We find that the informed trading hypothesis explains about 75% of total persistence, and that the remaining amount is attributable entirely to cross-fund own-country persistence. While asynchroneities across funds investing in the same country are important, asynchroneities across countries, either within a given fund, or across funds, are not important. The cross-fund flow lags we identify might result from different fund investment processes, or from some funds mimicking others' decisions. We reject the hypothesis that wealth effects explain persistence.     

第二届“华标品雅城”杯广东省业余高尔夫球挑战赛4月拉开帷幕

4月18日,由广东省高尔夫球协会主办,广东华标创业集团（华标品雅城、华标品峰）协办、阳江涛景高尔夫度假村、惠州涛景高尔夫度假村承办、英禾广告公司负责策划推广执行的第二届＂华标品雅城＂杯广东省业余高尔夫球挑战赛．在阳江涛景高尔夫度假村开杆，从而拉开本届高尔夫球挑战赛的帷幕。     

Exchange Rate Instability: A Threshold Autoregressive Approach

We fit a two-regime threshold autoregressive model to a trade weighted index of the Australian real exchange rate. We find strong evidence of a threshold in the real exchange rate, with the data being classified into two regimes. The timing of the first regime is consistent with events that would be expected to have led to pressure on the Australian exchange rate. However, there is no evidence to suggest that the Asian economic crisis led to the real exchange rate entering this regime.     

House Price Changes and Idiosyncratic Risk: The Impact of Property Characteristics

Although the average change in house prices is related to changes in fundamentals or perhaps market-wide bubbles, not all houses in a market appreciate at the same rate. The primary focus of our study is to investigate the reasons for these variations in price changes among houses within a market. We draw on three theories for guidance, one related to the optimal search strategy for sellers of atypical dwellings, another focusing on the bargaining process between a seller and potential buyers and the third relying on the concept of land leverage. We hypothesize that houses will appreciate at different rates depending on the characteristics of the property and the change in the strength of the housing market. These hypotheses are supported using data from three New Zealand housing markets.