Because a borrower often faces switching costs in dealing with individual banks, the financial health of any given bank might affect the borrower's cost of funds. These costs would be particularly large for firms that have close relationships with relatively few banks. The purpose of this paper...

Trade credit is one of the most important sources of short-term external finance for small firms. Previous literature has focused mainly on the substitution of bank loans for trade credit during monetary tightening among many firms, but in this paper we investigate the role of trade credit...

Empirical studies in corporate finance have long been interested in the role of banks in reducing the costs of financial distress. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how various measures of bank health and how defaults of major trading partners affected the probability of bankruptcy...

Empirical studies in corporate finance have long been focused on the role of banks in reducing the costs of financial distress. The environment and events in Japan provide a "natural experiment" that allows such empirical studies. The number of bankruptcies steadily increased throughout the...

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of trade credit during the banking crisis in Japan. Trade credit is one of the most important sources of short-term external finance for small firms. Previous literature has focused mainly on the substitution of bank loans for trade credit...

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of trade credit during the banking crisis in Japan. Trade credit is one of the most important sources of short-term external finance for small firms. Previous literature has focused mainly on the substitution of bank loans for trade credit...

After prolonged recessions, the Japanese economy had recovered in the first half of the 2000s and recorded sustained growth until summer 2007. The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of international trade with China for the recovery of Japanese firms in the 2000s from both macro- and...

We define downward price rigidity as the state in which the speed at which prices fall is slower than that in which they rise. Based on this definition, we examine the downward price rigidity of each item that constitutes the core CPI of Japan. That is, according to the results of fractional...