Trade credit policies in the construction industry: A comparative study of Central-Eastern and Western EU countries
Julia Koralun-Bereźnicka
Faculty of Management, University of GdańskSopot, Poland
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et Magdalena Gostkowska-Drzewicka
Faculty of Management, University of GdańskSopot, Poland
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31 mars 2025
À propos de cet article
Catégorie d'article: Empirical Paper
Publié en ligne: 31 mars 2025
Pages: 56 - 69
Reçu: 25 févr. 2024
Accepté: 09 juin 2024
DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/ijme-2024-0023
Mots clés
© 2024 Julia Koralun-Bereźnicka et al., published by Sciendo
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Figure 1.
![Expected mean values of selected financial ratios for construction industry compared with other industries.
Note: BKL, short-term bank loan to assets ratio; D/A, total debt to assets ratio; LTD, long-term debt to assets ratio; STD, short term debt to assets ratio. Vertical bars represent 0.95 confidence intervals.
Source: Authors’ calculations based on [BACH, 2023].](https://sciendo-parsed.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/6471f9f7215d2f6c89db748c/j_ijme-2024-0023_fig_001.jpg?X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Content-Sha256=UNSIGNED-PAYLOAD&X-Amz-Credential=AKIA6AP2G7AKOUXAVR44%2F20250910%2Feu-central-1%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20250910T152639Z&X-Amz-Expires=3600&X-Amz-Signature=5608f1892c60ec17757ad386b6b2ddb673dc132a6c70b552fde332f6f3ee149f&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&x-amz-checksum-mode=ENABLED&x-id=GetObject)
Figure 2.
![Mean values of trade credit ratios in the construction industry across countries.
Note: The mean values are calculated for all size groups of construction firms (S, M, L) and for all years available for a given region or country in the period 2000–2020.
Source: Authors’ calculations based on [BACH, 2023].](https://sciendo-parsed.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/6471f9f7215d2f6c89db748c/j_ijme-2024-0023_fig_002.jpg?X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Content-Sha256=UNSIGNED-PAYLOAD&X-Amz-Credential=AKIA6AP2G7AKOUXAVR44%2F20250910%2Feu-central-1%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20250910T152639Z&X-Amz-Expires=3600&X-Amz-Signature=acf8c20e77a83ab20cf803c95ee3965291b14fcd60b071b296f8a9f8a302b5bd&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&x-amz-checksum-mode=ENABLED&x-id=GetObject)
One-way ANOVA results with the grouping factor as the classification of country as the CEE or WE EU member; values of F statistics and p-value are in parentheses
| Size | Dependent variable | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| NTC | REC | PAY | |
| Small | 2.823 (0.094) | 1.626 (0.204) | 0.144 (0.704) |
| Medium | 1.676 (0.197) | 1.252 (0.264) | 0.341 (0.560) |
| Large | 1.586 (0.209) | ||
| All size groups | 2.432 (0.119) | 0.161 (0.688) | 3.184 (0.075) |
Estimation results of panel regressions for the construction industry in WE countries
| Variable | Model (1a) NTC |
Model (1b) REC | Model (1c) PAY | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Estimate | Std. error | Estimate | Std. error | Estimate | Std. error | |
| Const. | 0.249 |
0.044 | 0.447 |
0.035 | 0.175 |
0.021 |
| BKL | 0.279 |
0.120 | ||||
| COL | –0.320 |
0.030 | –0.532 |
0.038 | –0.214 |
0.024 |
| INV | –0.341 |
0.046 | –0.404 |
0.038 | –0.112 |
0.032 |
| CSH | –0.411 |
0.103 | –0.214 |
0.069 | ||
| CGS | –0.047 |
0.019 | 0.066 |
0.012 | ||
| ROA | 0.250 |
0.103 | ||||
| TAT | –0.037 |
0.011 | 0.047 |
0.011 | 0.067 |
0.007 |
| SIZE | S |
S |
S |
|||
| CT | No | PT |
LU |
|||
| YEAR | 2001 |
2016 |
No | |||
| No. obs. | 480 | 480 | 480 | |||
| R2 | n/a | 0.834 | 0.809 | |||
| AIC | –1876.2 | –1777.5 | –2066.1 | |||
| Joint sign. of diff. group means | F(23, 451) = 1.9 [0.008] | F(23, 451) = 7.4 [0.000] | F(23, 451) = 12.5 [0.000] | |||
| Breusch-Pagan | LM = 7.1 [0.008] | LM = 183.0 [0.000] | LM = 393.4 [0.000] | |||
| Hausman test | 1.6 [0.895] | 18.5 [0.001] | 30.5 [0.000] | |||
| Joint significance robust |
||||||
| Size | 1.6 [0.208] | 99.3 [0.000] | 41.0 [0.000] | |||
| Country | 8.7 [0.000] | 8.4 [0.008] | 8.6 [0.006] | |||
| Year | 46.0 [0.000] | 5.3 [0.030] | 30.5 [0.000] | |||
Definition of variables employed in the analysis
| Variable character | Symbol | Specification | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dependent | NTC | Net trade credit = (Accounts receivable – Accounts payable)/Assets | |
| REC | Trade credit supplied = Accounts receivable/Assets | ||
| PAY | Trade credit obtained = Accounts payable/Assets | ||
| Explanatory | BKL | Short-term bank loan = Current amounts owed to credit institutions/Assets | |
| COL | Collateral = Fixed assets/Assets | ||
| INV | Inventory = Inventories/Assets | ||
| Firm-specific financial ratios | CSH | Cash at hand = Cash and available bank amounts/Assets | |
| CGS | Costs of goods sold = Costs of goods sold, materials and consumables/Net turnover | ||
| LEV | Debt ratio = Debt/Equity | ||
| ROA | Return on assets = Net operating profit/Assets | ||
| TAT | Total asset turnover = Net turnover/Assets | ||
| Dummy variables | SIZE | Size groups of firms (S, M, L) | |
| CT | Countries (AT, BE, CZ, DE, ES, FR, HR, IT, LU, PL, PT, SK) | ||
| YEAR | Years (2000, …, 2020) | ||
Estimation results of panel regressions for construction industry in CEE countries
| Variable | Model (1a) NTC | Model (1b) REC |
Model (1c) PAY | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Estimate | Std. error | Estimate | Std. error | Estimate | Std. error | |
| Const. | 0.243 |
0.039 | 0.550 |
0.110 | 0.178 |
0.020 |
| COL | –0.272 |
0.048 | –0.537 |
0.076 | –0.217 |
0.019 |
| INV | –0.349 |
0.056 | –0.421 |
0.082 | ||
| CSH | –0.423 |
0.203 | –0.284 |
0.081 | ||
| CGS | –0.077 |
0.028 | ||||
| LEV | –0.094 |
0.053 | ||||
| ROA | 0.091 |
0.040 | ||||
| TAT | –0.049 |
0.010 | 0.046 |
0.023 | 0.080 |
0.007 |
| SIZE | No | No | S |
|||
| CT | SK |
No | HR |
|||
| YEAR | 2016 |
2012 |
2017 |
|||
| No. obs. | 210 | 210 | 210 | |||
| R2 | 0.535 | n/a | 0.871 | |||
| AIC | –806.5 | –722.2 | –918.4 | |||
| Panel specification tests | ||||||
| Joint sign. of diff. group means | F(11, 193) = 2.8 [0.002] | F(11, 195) = 4.1 [0.000] | F(11, 195) = 6.0 [0.000] | |||
| Breusch-Pagan | LM = 4.7 [0.030] | LM = 25.3 [0.000] | LM = 55.9 [0.000] | |||
| Hausman test | H = 15.4 [0.009] | 5.5 [0.137] | 8.6 [0.035] | |||
| Joint significance robust |
||||||
| Size | n/a | n/a | 41.0 [0.000] | |||
| Country | 3.74 [0.079] | n/a | 8.6 [0.006] | |||
| Year | 12.67 [0.004] | 4.3 [0.000] | 3.2 [0.100] | |||