Delaying Payments in the European Union: An Empirical Dynamic Panel Data Analysis

We analyse delaying payments of accounts receivable by combining macroeconomic shocks with firm characteristics controls. We use microeconomic dataset on financial statements of selected firms in European Union member states from AMADEUS for the period 2005 ? 2014, and employ the system Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) framework to analyse the dynamic models. The empirical results show positive impact of the financial crisis on delaying payments. The two-step System GMM estimator obtain significance positive estimates of the coefficient of lagged late payment. Also, we identify significance positive relationship between late payment and firm performance measures of current ratio and gearing ratio, but negative relationship between late payment and firm turnover. The results suggest firms that delay in payments might have the tendency to delay in future payments.