developed a model of trade credit in which asymmetric information leads good firms to extend trade credit so that buyers can verify product quality before payment.
Their sample contained all industrial (SIC 2000 through 3999) firms with data available from COMPUSTAT for the three-year period ending in 1987 and used regression analysis.
They defined trade credit policy as the average time receivables are outstanding and measured this variable by computing each firm's days of sales outstanding (DSO), as accounts receivable per dollar of daily sales.
To reduce variability, they averaged DSO and all other measures over a three- year period.
They found evidence consistent with the model.
The findings suggest that producers may increase the implicit cost of extending trade credit by financing their receivables through payables and short-term borrowing.