Better payers? An empirical study of the trade credit practices of signatories of payment codes and members of FTSE4Good

In this paper we empirically analyze the use of trade credit in the United Kingdom in an ethically relevant manner. The main contributions of the paper are two. Firstly, we analyze the differences in trade credit practices between companies that sign a payment code and those that do not sign it. Secondly, we study if companies in FTSE4Good have a different behaviour related to payment policies. Using a FTSE sample in 2007, we find that signatories of a payment code do not have a substantially differentiate trade credit practices compared with those firms that have not signed a payment code. In the case of FTSE4Good companies, we show that indexed firms follow a clearly defined payment policy. However, although they use fewer days to pay suppliers than other companies, this difference is not statistically significant.