Turnover of industrial capital, commercial and bank credit: modern Unoist approach 3. Commercial credit

 

3. Commercial Credit

3.1 Reason for the Emergence of Commercial Credit

Now, we remove the assumption that no credit relations exist. The simplest form of credit is commercial credit between industrial capitals. When a buyer faces a shortage of money and a seller has abundant funds, the seller can sell products on credit. The buyer can thus save additional capital. This can be explained in two ways: Frist, when their sales are temporarily delayed, industrial capitalists can purchase materials on credit to maintain production. Second, if they can buy on credit whenever necessary, they can reallocate part of their reserves to expand production. (Itoh and Lapavitsas 1999, pp. 89–90).

In contrast, the seller can charge a markup on credit sales. It should be noted that selling on credit does not shorten the circulation time. The seller providing credit must advance additional capital to continue their own production until the buyer makes payment. If the seller discounts the bill with a bank (Marx 1991, p.615), they change from a credit giver to a credit receiver.

 

3.2 Profit transfer in the commercial credit between two capitals

Since the credit price increases by a markup on credit sales, part of the buyer’s profit is transferred to the seller. This transfer has been largely overlooked in literature. Macroeconomists, such as MTC and post-Keynesians, cancel out firm-to-firm relations. Economists focusing on production prices, such as Sraffians, ignore differences in circulation that exist within the same industry. Traditional Unoist scholars regarded markups on commercial credit only as a primitive form of interest and did not discuss them in detail.

Yamaguchi analyzed the transfer of a portion of profit through the delegation of circulation functions (Yamaguchi 1998, 70). Later, Obata discussed profit transfer between commercial and industrial capitals using a simple equation (Obata 2009). Following his approach, this paper examines profit transfer in commercial credit in this section, and in bank credit in the next section. The mathematical expressions in Sections 3 and 4 are a concise summary and further development of Iwata 2021a.

Suppose that the output of sector B is the input for sector A. Ai denotes an individual firm (i = 1, 2, …) and Bi denotes an individual firm (i = 1, 2, …). Assume that firm A1 in sector A faces a monetary shortage, while firm B1 in sector B has excess funds. B1 can sell their product to A1 on credit with a markup on the credit sale.

We denote the variables as follows:

P_B: cash price of products B

α: markup on credit sale

P_k: cost price of B

P_A: sale price of A
C_A: Advanced capital of the normal firm in sector A, including productive and circulation capital

C_B: Advanced capital of the normal firm in sector B, including productive and circulation capital

Q: quantity of purchases and sales (we use the same symbol Q by adjusting units at each stage) 

The variables P_k, P_B, and P_A are determined as production prices. One features of commercial credit is this relatively closed relation between two capitals, A₁ and B₁:αis represents a deviation from the production price P_B only within this bilateral relation.

We denote β, the share of commercial credit used by A1, as:

β＝ 　(Credit purchase by A1)/(Total purchase by A2)

First, on the production price system, assume that the profit rates of A1 and B1 are equal, without commercial credit,

Next, assume that A1’s lack of reserve funds and B1’s excess reserve funds are equal to the same amount Y.

Capitals A and B compete to maximize their respective profit rates via the markup. Finally, the following equality holds:

When the two profit rates are equal under commercial credit, the following holds:

   This means that the transferred portion of the profit of A1 (αβQ) is corresponding to the proportion to Y against total capital of A and B ( ).

The interest rate  is given by:

The equation assumes that the maturity period of the bill coincides with the period used for calculating interest (e.g., one year). The parameter  indicates that, when B1 allots capital Y for credit sales, a lower β implies a higher markup on credit sales to secure a profit on Y.