• Graduate Program
  • Research
  • Browse our Courses
  • Events
    • Events Calendar
    • Events Archive
    • Tinbergen Institute Lectures
    • Summer School
      • Deep Learning
      • Economics of Blockchain and Digital Currencies
      • Foundations of Machine Learning with Applications in Python
      • Marketing Research with Purpose
      • Modern Toolbox for Spatial and Functional Data
      • Sustainable Finance
      • Tuition Fees and Payment
      • Tinbergen Institute Summer School Program
    • Annual Tinbergen Institute Conference archive
  • News
  • Summer School
    • Deep Learning
    • Economics of Blockchain and Digital Currencies
    • Foundations of Machine Learning with Applications in Python
    • Marketing Research with Purpose
    • Modern Toolbox for Spatial and Functional Data
    • Sustainable Finance
  • Alumni

Perotti, E. (1998). Inertial Credit and Opportunistic Arrears in Transition European Economic Review, 42(9):1703--1725.


  • Journal
    European Economic Review

In a transition economy, enterprise restructuring may exhibit a Laffer-curve response to tighter credit as a result of rational collective inertia. In the presence of a rigid production structure, unenforceable contracts and high adjustment costs, a contraction in credit finance subtracts more liquidity than enterprises can generate internally. Because unrestructured firms are forced to extend trade credit to illiquid buyers, an increase in their number increases the availability of forced supplier credit, in turn increasing the attractiveness of inertial behavior. As trade credit cannot be enforced, a critical mass of trade and wage arrears causes pressure for a collective bailout, thus validating inertial behavior even by reformable firms.