Prudential Regulation, the Credit Crunch" and the Ineffectiveness of Monetary Policy: Evidence from Japan

The underlying causes of sharp declines in bank lending during recessions in large developed economies, as exemplified by the U.S. in the early 1990s and Japan in the late 1990s, are still being debated due to a lack of any convincing identification strategy of the supply side capital-lending relationship with lending demand. This paper is a first attempt to construct a strong instrument for bank capital from empirical observation of the banks' behavioral changes in the past and to estimate the impact of capital adequacy on the lending supply. The implications of prudential regulation and the ineffectiveness of a loose monetary policy are discussed based on the micro evidence presented.

Income Uncertainty and Self-Reported Precautionary Wealth: Evidence from the Japanese Micro Data

Using unique survey data which includes information on precautionary wealth and its target, we analyze the precautionary saving behavior of Japanese households. Our findings are: 1. Measures for income uncertainty have a positive influence on the target for precautionary wealth but not on precautionary wealth. 2. The positive influence of income uncertainty on the target vanishes when older households with a head aged 51 or older are included in the sample. These findings suggest that Japanese households save against income uncertainty until around when their head is aged 50 and then save against other risks such as the longevity risk.

How Do Relationship Lenders Price Loans to Small Firms?: "Hold-Up" Costs, Transparency, and Private and Public Security

We conduct a comprehensive examination on how relationship lenders price loans to small opaque firms using the rich matched data set of Japanese firms and their main banks. Our major findings are: 1. Neither measures for a borrower firm's transparency to the public (outsiders) nor measures for the firm's transparency to its main bank affect the lending rate. 2. A bank suffering from a greater ratio of non-performing loans to total asset charges a higher lending rate. 3. Treating the non-price terms of a loan contract as endogenous variables is crucial in consistently estimating the lending rate.

Availability of Firms' Information and their Choice of External Credit: Evidence from the Data of Small Firms

The main purpose of this paper is to present the empirical findings derived from the data of small firms that the availability of private and public information on the borrowing firm leads to diverse borrowing patterns among firms. Exploring logit models to characterize the firm's choice of a financial source, we find that firms whose information is poorly recorded, or who are publicly less recognized, are more likely to choose institutional lending over trade credit but as the recorded information becomes more organized and firms become more transparent, they tend to graduate to a greater use of trade credit.availability of information, institutional lending, trade credit, logit models

Bank Size and Lending Relationships in Japan

Current theoretical and empirical research suggests that small banks have a comparative advantage in processing soft information and delivering relationship lending. The most comprehensive analysis of this view found using U.S. data that smaller SMEs borrow from smaller banks and smaller banks have stronger relationships with their borrowers (Berger, Miller, Petersen, Rajan, and Stein 2005) (BMPRS). We employ essentially the same methodology as BMPRS on a unique Japanese data set and obtained findings that are quite interesting from an international comparison point of view. We found like BMPRS that larger firms tend to borrow from larger banks. However, unlike BMPRS we did not find that this was because larger firms are more transparent. Together these results imply that large banks do not necessarily have a comparative advantage in extending transactions-based lending. We also found like BMPRS that smaller banks have strong relationships with their borrowers. However, we find that banking relationships in the U.S. and Japan are strong in somewhat different dimensions. Our paper clarifies these and other interesting similarities and differences between the U.S. and Japan.

Availability of Firms' Information and their Choice of External Credit: Evidence from the Data of Small Firms

The main purpose of this paper is to present the empirical findings derived from the data of small firms that the availability of private and public information on the borrowing firm leads to diverse borrowing patterns among firms. Exploring logit models to characterize the firm's choice of a financial source, we find that firms whose information is poorly recorded, or who are publicly less recognized, are more likely to choose institutional lending over trade credit but as the recorded information becomes more organized and firms become more transparent, they tend to graduate to a greater use of trade credit.