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Journal of Corporate Finance Vol. 41 2016

Trade credit provision and national culture

Sadok El Ghoul; Xiaolan Zheng1

1 University of Nottingham Ningbo China

Abstract

In this paper we investigate the relation between trade credit provision and national culture as captured by Hofstede's four cultural dimensions (collectivism/individualism, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, and masculinity/femininity). Consistent with our predictions based on several theories of trade credit, we find that after controlling for firm- and country-level factors as well as industry effects, trade credit provision is higher in countries with higher collectivism, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, and masculinity scores. These results are robust to using alternative measures of culture and trade credit, alternative sample compositions, and alternative estimation methods, as well as to addressing potential endogeneity concerns. International trade openness, however, mitigates the relation between trade credit provision and our proxies for national culture.

DOI
10.1016/j.jcorpfin.2016.07.002
Volume
41
Pages
475-501
Language
en
Sources
bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

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