Aydan Dogan and Ida Hjortsoe
Exporting permits companies to entry a bigger market, nevertheless it additionally implies prices and dangers. A few of these prices and dangers are because of the time between manufacturing and gross sales usually being longer for exported items than for items offered within the home market. In our latest Employees Working Paper, we discover that amongst UK manufacturing companies, exporters are inclined to have extra liabilities than non-exporters, and we present that the hyperlink between short-term liabilities and labour prices is considerably tighter for exporters. This novel proof helps the view that exporters’ short-term liabilities assist cowl prices and dangers over the longer time interval between manufacturing and gross sales. Consequently, monetary circumstances are prone to have an effect on exporters greater than non-exporters.
How do UK exporting and non-exporting companies’ monetary conditions differ?
We use agency stage knowledge on UK manufacturing companies’ steadiness sheets from Bureau van Dijk. This knowledge set has the benefit of together with not solely giant companies listed on the inventory market, but in addition small and medium-sized companies that aren’t listed on the inventory market. These characterize a considerable a part of UK exporting companies.
Our baseline knowledge set has 83,745 firm-year observations over the interval 1995–2019. On common 46.5% of companies export every year. Desk A studies chosen traits of companies, evaluating exporting and non-exporting companies. The numbers reported correspond to the pattern imply, whereas the numbers in parenthesis correspond to the pattern median. Although the pattern is skewed in the direction of small and medium-sized companies and away from micro companies (with lower than 10 staff) and so just isn’t consultant of the universe of UK companies, it’s clear from evaluating the imply and median that the pattern has many small and medium-sized companies, and a few very giant companies too. The median agency in our pattern has a turnover of £9,145,000 and 86 staff.
The desk reveals that exporting companies are usually bigger than non-exporting companies by way of their turnover and the variety of staff. Furthermore, exporting companies are inclined to have extra short-term liabilities, extra long-term liabilities and the next quantity of complete belongings. These traits are in step with findings in earlier literature: exporting and non-exporting companies differ by way of their measurement as eg identified in Bernard and Jensen (1995) for US companies or Greenaway and Kneller (2004) for a pattern of UK companies.
Desk A: Abstract statistics – baseline pattern
| Complete | Exporters | Non-exporters | |
| Turnover (£1,000) | 108,564 (9,145) | 130,013 (12,682) | 82,005 (6,366) |
| Variety of staff | 626 (86) | 758 (118) | 512 (65) |
| Quick-term liabilities (£1,000) | 39,363 (2,330) | 52,976 (3,366) | 27,489 (1,598) |
| Lengthy-term liabilities (£1,000) | 42,915 (424) | 60,246 (692) | 27,798 (263) |
| Complete belongings (£1,000) | 123,899 (6,000) | 168,461 (8,744) | 85,028 (3,985) |
| Observations | 83,745 | 39,016 | 44,729 |
Supply: Dogan and Hjortsoe (2024).
Why do exporting companies have increased short-term liabilities?
We now focus our consideration on the variations between exporting and non-exporting companies’ short-term liabilities. These are liabilities that have to be repaid within the subsequent 12 months. To realize insights into why exporting companies are inclined to have increased short-term loans than non-exporting companies, we examine how the relation between short-term liabilities and agency traits relies on companies’ exporting standing.
Particularly, utilizing our agency stage steadiness sheet knowledge we estimate a mannequin by which the short-term liabilities of a agency might rely upon its measurement, as proxied by its contemporaneous turnover, and its labour prices. We enable that relation to vary throughout exporters and non-exporters, and we embody time and agency mounted results.
We begin by contemplating to what extent short-term liabilities are associated to agency measurement. As already famous, exporting companies are prone to be bigger, each by way of turnover and variety of staff. Bigger companies have simpler entry to finance and thus have increased liabilities as argued eg in Gertler and Hubbard (1988) or Gertler and Gilchrist (1994). We estimate the relation between companies’ short-term liabilities and their turnover to be important and constructive: an additional £1,000 of agency turnover is related to a rise in short-term loans of round £200. For exporting companies, this relationship is a bit decrease, maybe as a result of abroad turnover is perceived as riskier by the monetary establishments giving out short-term loans.
We now flip to the speculation that exporting companies’ working capital necessities are bigger than for non-exporting companies. This is able to be the case if, as emphasised by Alfaro et al (2021), completely different timings of manufacturing and gross sales are prone to exacerbate monetary dangers and necessities for exporters. This is able to even be in step with Antràs and Foley (2015) who level out that longer supply and transportation instances in worldwide commerce imply that companies that commerce internationally have a bigger want for working capital. If exporters usually tend to require short-term finance to cowl labour prices throughout the longer time between manufacturing and receipt of proceeds, then we should always see a constructive correlation between labour prices and short-term loans on the agency stage that’s extra pronounced for exporters.
We examine whether or not exporters’ short-term loans are associated to their labour prices, as soon as we management for his or her measurement. We discover a constructive relation between labour prices, as proxied by remuneration prices, and short-term liabilities for all companies – however the relation is considerably and meaningfully bigger for exporting companies: for each additional pound paid in remuneration prices, non-exporting companies improve their short-term loans by round £0.74 – however exporters improve their short-term loans by greater than £1.30. These outcomes point out that whereas short-term loans are associated to remuneration for all companies, the correlation is considerably increased for exporters than non-exporters. That is in line with exporting companies requiring extra short-term loans than non-exporting companies in an effort to (partly) finance labour prices, and thus helps the view that exporting companies’ working capital necessities are bigger than for non-exporting companies.
Implications
We determine a hyperlink between companies’ short-term loans and their labour prices. This hyperlink is tighter for exporting than non-exporting companies, indicating that exporting companies have increased working capital necessities than non-exporting companies. In consequence, adjustments to short-term financing circumstances are prone to have an effect on exporters disproportionately.
In our latest Employees Working Paper, we arrange a mannequin which aligns with this novel stylised reality. We estimate this mannequin and discover that adjustments to the monetary prices of exporting are crucial for UK export dynamics: it’s the most important driver, alongside UK productiveness shocks.
Aydan Dogan works within the Financial institution’s International Evaluation Division and Ida Hjortsoe works within the Financial institution’s Analysis Hub.
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