Trade financing procedures in Britain and Japan

Abstract

This paper compares the financing procedures adopted in foreign trade by British and Japnese companies, for such procedures have important implications for the teo countries' trading partners and are an important aspect of a country's trade competitiveness. Information relating to 11 variables generated by responses from some 282 British and Japnese companies are analyses and differences in practice are isolated in terms of total trade, and in tems of importers or exporters seperately in the cases of five of these variables. It is demonstrated that these variables can be utilized to classify correctly over 75% of the totle number of companies in the sample as belonging to the British or Japnese groupings. However, further investigation of the nature of the variables reveals that Japan's relative trading success cannot be ascribed to its trade financing procedures.