Credit Constraints and Margins of Import: First Evidence for German Manufacturing Enterprises

This study uses tailor-made enterprise-level data for 2008-2010 from various sources for firms from manufacturing industries to test for the link between credit constraints, measured by a credit rating score provided by a leading credit rating agency, and imports in Germany for the first time. We find empirical evidence that a better credit rating score is positively related to extensive margins of import - firms with a better score have a higher probability to import, they import more goods and they source from more countries of origin. The intensive margin of imports - the share of imports in total sales - is found not to be related to credit constraints.