Does trade credit facilitate access to bank finance? an empirical evidence from Portuguese and Spanish small medium size enterprises

To assess the existence of credit rationing, we examine if trade credit is a substitute and/or a complement to bank credit. Using a data set of Portuguese and Spanish small and medium sized enterprises, and controlling for endogeneity problems by using GMM estimators, our results confirm the existence of credit rationing. This effect is particularly strong for firms that maintain an exclusive relationship with one bank, which indicate a greater severity of adverse selection problems for those firms. However, our results indicate that the substitution and complementary hypothesis are not mutually exclusive, especially for the younger and smaller firms. In line with the theories that emphasize the informational role of trade credit, due the informative advantage of suppliers, our empirical results confirm that trade credit allow the younger and smaller firms to improve their reputation, as trade credit reveals the private information of the supplier to the bank, in turn, banks can update their beliefs about customer default risk and agree to increase bank credit.