Abstract: Factoring is a financing mechanism in which a financial institution provides short-term finance to the seller in a supply chain based on the buyer’s bank credit and business transactions between firms. With a time-continuous production model, this paper investigates the optimal factoring policy of a capital-constraint manufacturer facing constant demand rate. Building on the trade-off between financing cost of factoring and demand loss incurred from capital shortage, we compare the manufacturer’s profits under a fixed-maturity factoring policy and a just-in-time factoring policy. Under the fixed-maturity factoring policy, the optimal timing of using factoring to finance production decreases with profit margin of the manufacturer, but increases with factoring fee rate, the maturity of accounts receivable and the manufacturer's initial capital level. The factor, as a Stackelberg game leader, decides the optimal factoring fee rate to maximize his own profit. Our numerical results show that a factor may earn less profit when charging the manufacturer a higher factoring fee rate. We also show that the factor should charge a less factoring fee rate when the accounts receivables are with longer maturities.

Key words: factoring, accounts receivable financing, capital constraint, continuous production

摘要： 保理是融资机构基于供应链上下游企业之间实际发生交易而给予供应链卖方企业的一种短期融资。基于连续生产模型研究了资金约束制造商的最优保理融资策略。考虑保理时间决策对融资成本和需求损失的影响,比较了固定期保理和即时保理两种策略下制造商的利润。研究发现,固定期保理策略下的最优保理时间随着其边际利润的增加而提前,而随着保理费率上升、应收款账期延长、自有资金增加而延迟。数值研究结果发现,保理商最优保理费率随着应收账款账期延长而降低。

关键词: 保理, 应收账款融资, 资金约束, 连续生产