This paper examines how collateral and personal guarantees affect firms’ ex-post performance employing a propensity score matching estimation approach. Based on a unique firm-level panel data set of more than 500 small-and-medium-sized borrower firms in Japan, we find that borrowers with high...

This paper investigates how a firm's borrowing cost evolves as it ages. Using a new data set of more than 200,000 bank-dependent small firms in 1997-2002, we find the following. First, the distribution of borrowing cost tends to become less skewed to the right over time. Second, this shift of...

From 1998-2001, the Japanese government, in an effort to stimulate the flow of funds to the small business sector, implemented a massive credit guarantee program that was unprecedented in both scale and scope. Because the program was accessible by nearly every small firm we are able to clearly...

This paper investigates how firms' borrowing costs evolve as they age. Using a new panel data set of about 100,000 bank-dependent small firms for 1997-2002 and focusing on the channel of "adaptation" (i.e., surviving firms' borrowing costs decline as they age) and that of "selection" (i.e.,...

This paper examines the effectiveness of public credit guarantee programs in not only increasing the availability of loans to small and medium enterprises (SMEs), but in also improving the ex-post performance of borrowing firms. Using a unique panel data set, we identify the effects of a massive...

In this paper, we investigate whether a natural selection mechanism works for firm exit. By using data of firms after a devastating earthquake, the Greeat Tohoku Earthquake, we examine the impact of firm efficiency on firm exit both inside and outside the earthquake-affected areas. We find...

Employing data from a unique firm survey, this article examines small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) financing in Japan during the global financial crisis. The major findings of the article are two-fold. First, in terms of credit availability, loans extended by main banks were the “first...

In this paper, we investigate whether a natural selection works for firm exit after a massive natural disaster. By using a unique data set of more than 84,000 firms after the Great Tohoku Earthquake, we examine the impact of firm efficiency on firm bankruptcy both inside and outside the...