企业营运资金管理中英文对照外文翻译文献.docx

1、中英文对照外文翻译文献(文档含英文原文和中文翻译)原文：Effects Of Working Capital Management On Sme ProfitabilityThe corporate finance literature has traditionally focused on the study of long-term financial decisions. Researchers have particularly offered studies analyzinginvestments, capital structure, dividends or company

2、valuation, among other topics. Butthe investment that firms make in short-term assets, and the resources used withmaturities of under one year, represent the main share of items on a firms balancesheet. In fact, in our sample the current assets of small and medium-sized Spanish firmsrepresent 69.48

3、percent of their assets, and at the same time their current liabilitiesrepresent more than 52.82 percent of their liabilities.Working capital management is important because of its effects on the firmsprofitability and risk, and consequently its value (Smith, 1980). On the one hand,maintaining high

4、inventory levels reduces the cost of possible interruptions in theproduction process, or of loss of business due to the scarcity of products, reducessupplycosts, and protects against price fluctuations, among other advantages (Blinder andManccini, 1991). On the other, granting trade credit favors th

5、e firms sales in variousways. Trade credit can act as an effective price cut (Brennan, Maksimovic and Zechner,1988; Petersen and Rajan, 1997), incentivizes customers to acquire merchandise attimes of low demand (Emery, 1987), allows customers to check that the merchandisethey receive is as agreed (q

6、uantity and quality) and to ensure that the services contractedare carried out (Smith, 1987), and helps firms to strengthen long-term relationships withtheir customers (Ng, Smith and Smith, 1999). However, firms that invest heavily ininventory and trade credit can suffer reduced profitability. Thus,

7、the greater theinvestment in current assets, the lower the risk, but also the lower the profitabilityobtained.On the other hand, trade credit is a spontaneous source of financing that reducesthe amount required to finance the sums tied up in the inventory and customer accounts.But we should bear in

8、mind that financing from suppliers can have a very high implicitcost if early payment discounts are available. In fact the opportunity cost may exceed 20percent, depending on the discount percentage and the discount period granted (Wilner,2000; Ng, Smith and Smith, 1999). In this respect, previous s

9、tudies have analyzed thehigh cost of trade credit, and find that firms finance themselves with seller credit whenthey do not have other more economic sources of financing available (Petersen andRajan, 1994 and 1997).Decisions about how much to invest in the customer and inventory accounts, andhow mu

10、ch credit to accept from suppliers, are reflected in the firms cash conversioncycle, which represents the average number of days between the date when the firmmust start paying its suppliers and the date when it begins to collect payments from itscustomers. Some previous studies have used this measu

11、re to analyze whether shorteningthe cash conversion cycle has positive or negative effects on the firms profitability.Specifically, Shin and Soenen (1998) analyze the relation between the cash conversioncycle and profitability for a sample of firms listed on the US stock exchange during theperiod 19

12、74-1994. Their results show that reducing the cash conversion cycle to areasonable extent increases firms profitability. More recently, Deloof (2003) analyzes asample of large Belgian firms during the period 1992-1996. His results confirm thatBelgian firms can improve their profitability by reducing

13、 the number of days accountsreceivable are outstanding and reducing inventories. Moreover, he finds that lessprofitable firms wait longer to pay their bills.These previous studies have focused their analysis on larger firms. However, themanagement of current assets and liabilities is particularly im

14、portant in the case of smalland medium-sized companies. Most of these companies assets are in the form ofcurrent assets. Also, current liabilities are one of their main sources of external financein view of their difficulties in obtaining funding in the long-term capital markets(Petersen and Rajan,

15、1997) and the financing constraints that they face (Whited, 1992;Fazzari and Petersen, 1993). In this respect, Elliehausen and Woken (1993), Petersenand Rajan (1997) and Danielson and Scott (2000) show that small and medium-sizedUS firms use vendor financing when they have run out of debt. Thus, eff

16、icient workingcapital management is particularly important for smaller companies (Peel and Wilson,1996).In this context, the objective of the current work is to provide empirical evidenceabout the effects of working capital management on profitability for a panel made up of8,872 SMEs during the peri

17、od 1996-2002. This work contributes to the literature in twoways. First, no previous such evidence exists for the case of SMEs. We use a sample ofSpanish SMEs that operate within the so-called continental model, which ischaracterized by its less developed capital markets (LaPorta, Lpez-de-Silanes,Sh

18、leifer, and Vishny, 1997), and by the fact that most resources are channeled throughfinancial intermediaries (Pampilln, 2000). All this suggests that Spanish SMEs havefewer alternative sources of external finance available, which makes them moredependent on short-term finance in general, and on trad

19、e credit in particular. AsDemirguc-Kunt and Maksimovic (2002) suggest, firms operating in countries with moredeveloped banking systems grant more trade credit to their customers, and at the sametime they receive more finance from their own suppliers. The second contribution isthat, unlike the previo

20、us studies by Shin and Soenen (1998) and Deloof (2003), in thecurrent work we have conducted tests robust to the possible presence of endogeneityproblems. The aim is to ensure that the relationships found in the analysis carried outare due to the effects of the cash conversion cycle on corporate pro

21、fitability and not viceversa.Our findings suggest that managers can create value by reducing their firmsnumber of days accounts receivable and inventories. Similarly, shortening the cashconversion cycle also improves the firms profitability.We obtained the data used in this study from the AMADEUS da

22、tabase. This database was developed by Bureau van Dijk, and contains financial and economic data on European companies.The sample comprises small and medium-sized firms from Spain. The selection of SMEs was carried out according to the requirements established by the EuropeanCommissions recommendati

23、on 96/280/CE of 3April, 1996, on the definition of small and medium-sized firms. Specifically, we selected those firms meeting the following criteria for at least three years: a) have fewer than 250 employees; b) turn over less than40 million; and c) possess less than 27 million of total assets.In a

24、ddition to the application of those selection criteria, we applied a series of filters. Thus, we eliminated the observations of firms with anomalies in their accounts, such as negative values in their assets, current assets, fixed assets, liabilities, current liabilities, capital, depreciation, or i

25、nterest paid. We removed observations of entry items from the balance sheet and profit and loss account exhibiting signs that were contrary to reasonable expectations. Finally, we eliminated 1 percent of the extreme values presented by several variables. As a result of applying these filters, we end

26、ed up with a sample of 38,464 observations.In order to introduce the effect of the economic cycle on the levels invested inworking capital, we obtained information about the annual GDP growth in Spain fromEurostat.In order to analyze the effects of working capital management on the firmsprofitabilit

27、y, we used the return on assets (ROA) as the dependent variable. We definedthis variable as the ratio of earnings before interest and tax to assets.With regards to the independent variables, we measured working capitalmanagement by using the number of days accounts receivable, number of days ofinven

28、tory and number of days accounts payable. In this respect, number of daysaccounts receivable (AR) is calculated as 365 accounts receivable/sales. Thisvariable represents the average number of days that the firm takes to collect paymentsfrom its customers. The higher the value, the higher its investm

29、ent in accountsreceivable.We calculated the number of days of inventory (INV) as 365 inventories/purchases. This variable reflects the average number of days of stock heldby the firm. Longer storage times represent a greater investment in inventory for aparticular level of operations.The number of d

30、ays accounts payable (AP) reflects the average time it takesfirms to pay their suppliers. We calculated this as 365 accounts payable/purchases.The higher the value, the longer firms take to settle their payment commitments to theirsuppliers.Considering these three periods jointly, we estimated the c

31、ash conversion cycle(CCC). This variable is calculated as the number of days accounts receivable plus thenumber of days of inventory minus the number of days accounts payable. The longerthe cash conversion cycle, the greater the net investment in current assets, and hence thegreater the need for fin

32、ancing of current assets.Together with these variables, we introduced as control variables the size of thefirm, the growth in its sales, and its leverage. We measured the size (SIZE) as thelogarithm of assets, the sales growth (SGROW) as (Sales1 Sales0)/Sales0, the leverage(DEBT) as the ratio of debt to liabilities. Dellof (2003) in his study of large Belgianfirms also considered the ratio of fixed financial assets to total assets as a controlvariable. For some firms in his study such assets are a significant part of total assets.Howeve