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...

Using a unique dataset of more than 140,000 manufacturing firms in Japan containing information on their suppliers and customers, this paper looks at the physical distances between transaction partners to examine the localization of transaction relationships. We find the following. First, based...

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...

Using a unique dataset of non-listed firms that identifies the banks the firms transact with, we examine the effects of the largest-ever bank merger in Japan, that between Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi (BTM) and UFJ Bank (UFJ) in 2005. We focus on how the merger affected firms through their firm-bank...