In considering trade credit, we need to ask three questions:1. Why do nonfinancial firms commonly participate in the process of financial intermediation by extending credit to their customers?2. What explains differences in credit periods between firms and industries as well as over time for specific firms and industries?3. How do changing monetary conditions affect the credit that firms extend to their customers?To answer these questions, we first identify two reasons for credit sales: the first we might call a financing motive, and the second a transactions motive. The transactions motive can readily be understood—it costs something to match the time pattern of payment for goods with the time pattern of receipt of goods. Buyers benefit if bills are allowed to accumulate for periodic payment. Furthermore, trade credit gives buyers time to plan for the payment of unexpected purchases, enables them to forecast future cash outlays with greater certainty, and simplifies their cash management. To the extent that buyers benefit, sellers have an opportunity to sell credit. It is likely that, to a large extent, the aggregate stock of trade credit is explained by the transactions motive.

Robert A. Schwartz, Efficient Capital Markets: A Review of Theory and Empirical Work: Discussion, The Journal of Finance, Vol. 25, No. 2, Papers and Proceedings of the Twenty-Eighth Annual Meeting of the American Finance Association New York, N.Y. December, 28-30, 1969 (May, 1970), pp. 421-423

Robert A. Schwartz, David K. Whitcomb, Evidence on the Presence and Causes of Serial Correlation in Market Model Residuals, The Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Vol. 12, No. 2 (Jun., 1977), pp. 291-313

In a recent article in this Journal, Amir Barnea [1] proposes a criterion for assessing the market-making efficiency of New York Stock Exchange specialists. The appealing aspects of Barnea's method are that it uses publicly available data (common stock prices) and operates on a variable of primary concern to investors, the variance of returns on common stock. The difficulty we see in applying his approach, however, is that Barnea's performance criterion can be sensitive to a number of factors in addition to any impact the specialist might have, and that effective specialist intervention might have either a positive or negative impact on the performance measure. Thus, his specialist ranking seems to be quite misleading, and his empirical findings appear to be amenable to a substantially different interpretation than that which he provides.

The authors analyze the rationale for limit order trading. Use of limit orders involves two risks: (1) an adverse information event can trigger an undesirable execution, and (2) favorable news can result in a desirable execution not being obtained. On the other hand, a paucity of limit orders can result in accentuated short-term price fluctuations that compensate a limit order trader. The authors' empirical tests suggest that trading via limit orders dominates trading via market orders for market participants with relatively well-balanced portfolios, and that placing a network of buy and sell limit orders as a pure trading strategy is profitable.

We analyze the rationale for limit order trading. Use of limit orders involves two risks: 1) an adverse information event can trigger an undesirable execution, and 2) favorable news can result in a desirable execution not being obtained. On the other hand, a paucity of limit orders can result in accentuated short-term price fluctuations that compensate a limit order trader. Our empirical tests suggest that trading via limit orders dominates trading via market orders for market participants with relatively well balanced portfolios, and that placing a network of buy and sell limit orders as a pure trading strategy is profitable.

We analyze the rationale for limit order trading. Use of limit orders involves two risks: 1) an adverse information event can trigger an undesirable execution, and 2) favorable news can result in a desirable execution not being obtained. On the other hand, a paucity of limit orders can result in accentuated short‐term price fluctuations that compensate a limit order trader. Our empirical tests suggest that trading via limit orders dominates trading via market orders for market participants with relatively well balanced portfolios, and that placing a network of buy and sell limit orders as a pure trading strategy is profitable.