The Ministry of Finance's "Corporate Enterprise Quarterly Statistics" (Hojin kigyo tokei kiho) is the only statistical source of well-balanced information about the financing behavior of Japanese firms. Indeed, there are few comparable sources available anywhere in the world. Using this...

Researches on Japanese corporate finance typically start from the premise that banks decisively affect corporate behavior. Crucial to this premise in the Japanese context are two claims: the strength of a firm's relationship with a specific bank (and the funds that the bank makes available to...