1、中文 3800 字 2190 单词 外 文 翻 译 原文 ： Effects of working capital management on SME profitability Abstract The objective of the research presented here is to provide empirical evidence about the effects of working capital management on the profitability of a sample of small and medium-sized Spanish firms. W
2、ith this in mind, we collected a panel of 8,872 SMEs covering the period 1996-2002. The results, which are robust to the presence of endogeneity, demonstrate that managers can create value by reducing their firms number of days accounts receivable and inventories. Equally, shortening the cash conver
3、sion cycle also improves the firms profitability. Introduction The corporate finance literature has traditionally focused on the study of long-term financial decisions. Researchers have particularly offered studies analyzing investments, capital structure, dividends or company valuation, among other
4、 topics. But the investment that firms make in short-term assets, and the resources used with maturities of under one year, represent the main share of items on a firms balance sheet. In fact, in our sample the current assets of small and medium-sized Spanish firms represent 69.48 percent of their a
5、ssets, and at the same time their current liabilities represent more than 52.82 percent of their liabilities. Working capital management is important because of its effects on the firms profitability and risk, and consequently its value (Smith, 1980). On the one hand, maintaining high inventory leve
6、ls reduces the cost of possible interruptions in the production process, or of loss of business due to the scarcity of products, reduces supply costs, and protects against price fluctuations, among other advantages (Blinder and Manccini, 1991). On the other, granting trade credit favors the firms sa
7、les in various ways. Trade credit can act as an effective price cut (Brennan, Maksimovic and Zechner, 1988； Petersen and Rajan, 1997), incentivizes customers to acquire merchandise at times of low demand (Emery, 1987), allows customers to check that the merchandise they receive is as agreed (quantit
8、y and quality) and to ensure that the services contracted are carried out (Smith, 1987), and helps firms to strengthen long-term relationships with their customers (Ng, Smith and Smith, 1999). However, firms that invest heavily in inventory and trade credit can suffer reduced profitability. Thus, th
9、e greater the investment in current assets, the lower the risk, but also the lower the profitability obtained. On the other hand, trade credit is a spontaneous source of financing that reduces the amount required to finance the sums tied up in the inventory and customer accounts. But we should bear
10、in mind that financing from suppliers can have a very high implicit cost if early payment discounts are available. In fact the opportunity cost may exceed 20 percent, depending on the discount percentage and the discount period granted (Wilner,2000； Ng, Smith and Smith, 1999). In this respect, previ
11、ous studies have analyzed the high cost of trade credit, and find that firms finance themselves with seller credit when they do not have other more economic sources of financing available (Petersen and Rajan, 1994 and 1997). Decisions about how much to invest in the customer and inventory accounts,
12、and how much credit to accept from suppliers, are reflected in the firms cash conversion cycle, which represents the average number of days between the date when the firm must start paying its suppliers and the date when it begins to collect payments from its customers. Some previous studies have us
13、ed this measure to analyze whether shortening the cash conversion cycle has positive or negative effects on the firms profitability. Specifically, Shin and Soenen (1998) analyze the relation between the cash conversion cycle and profitability for a sample of firms listed on the US stock exchange dur
14、ing the period 1974-1994. Their results show that reducing the cash conversion cycle to a reasonable extent increases firms profitability. More recently, Deloof (2003) analyzes a sample of large Belgian firms during the period 1992-1996. His results confirm that Belgian firms can improve their profi
15、tability by reducing the number of days accounts receivable are outstanding and reducing inventories. Moreover, he finds that less profitable firms wait longer to pay their bills. These previous studies have focused their analysis on larger firms. However, the management of current assets and liabil
16、ities is particularly important in the case of small and medium-sized companies. Most of these companies assets are in the form of current assets. Also, current liabilities are one of their main sources of external finance in view of their difficulties in obtaining funding in the long-term capital m
17、arkets (Petersen and Rajan, 1997) and the financing constraints that they face (Whited, 1992； Fazzari and Petersen, 1993). In this respect, Elliehausen and Woken (1993), Petersen and Rajan (1997) and Danielson and Scott (2000) show that small and medium-sized US firms use vendor financing when they
18、have run out of debt. Thus, efficient working capital management is particularly important for smaller companies (Peel and Wilson, 1996). In this context, the objective of the current work is to provide empirical evidence about the effects of working capital management on profitability for a panel m
19、ade up of 8,872 SMEs during the period 1996-2002. This work contributes to the literature in two ways. First, no previous such evidence exists for the case of SMEs. We use a sample of Spanish SMEs that operate within the so-called continental model, which is characterized by its less developed capit
20、al markets (La Porta, Lpez-de-Silanes, Shleifer, and Vishny, 1997), and by the fact that most resources are channeled through financial intermediaries (Pampilln, 2000). All this suggests that Spanish SMEs have fewer alternative sources of external finance available, which makes them more dependent o
21、n short-term finance in general, and on trade credit in particular. As Demirguc-Kunt and Maksimovic (2002) suggest, firms operating in countries with more developed banking systems grant more trade credit to their customers, and at the same time they receive more finance from their own suppliers. Th
22、e second contribution is that, unlike the previous studies by Shin and Soenen (1998) and Deloof (2003), in the current work we have conducted tests robust to the possible presence of endogeneity problems. The aim is to ensure that the relationships found in the analysis carried out are due to the effects of the cash conversion cycle on corporate
