This paper investigates the determinants of the use of collateral and personal guarantees in, Japan's SME loan market. We find that firms' riskiness does not have a significant effect on the, likelihood that collateral is used. We find, however, that main banks whose claims are collateralized,...

We examine the pattern of top executive turnover among small non-listed businesses in Japan using a unique panel data set of about 25,000 firms for 2001-2007 and find the following. First, the likelihood of a change in top executive among non-listed firms is independent of their ex-ante...

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 for 1997-2002, we find the following. First, the distribution of borrowing costs tends to become less skewed to the right over time, which can be partially...

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...

This paper examines how collateral and personal guarantees affect firms' ex-post performance employing the 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 the following. (1) The...

This paper empirically examines the development of credit allocation amongst Japanese small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and the relationship between credit allocation and economic efficiency. We first investigate whether the credit market is inefficient, in that the survival of...