paper investigates whether bank ties in Japan were costly for mature and healthy firms in the 1980's and 1990's, and whether … banks continued to facilitate investment once non-bank financing options became available. Using the explicit bond issuing … much larger for main bank client firms, once bond market access is controlled for. This result, coupled with results on the …

Banks are optimally opaque institutions. They produce debt for use as a transaction medium (bank money), which requires … that information about the backing assets - loans - not be revealed, so that bank money does not fluctuate in value …-insensitive assets. For the economy as a whole, firms endogenously separate into bank finance and capital market/stock market finance …

greater insider ownership leads to less equity issuances. Several tests are consistent with the view that bank insiders are … between bank equity and lending, the results stress that ownership structure can shape the resilience of banks—and hence the …