EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Directed Credit? The Loan Market in High‐Growth Japan

Yoshiro Miwa () and John Ramseyer

Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, 2004, vol. 13, issue 1, 171-205

Abstract: Observers routinely claim that the Japanese government of the high‐growth 1960s and 1970s rationed and ultimately directed credit. It barred domestic competitors to banks, insulated the domestic capital market from international competitive pressure, and capped loan interest rates. In the resulting credit shortage, it promoted industrial policy by rationing credit. As much as the government purported to ration and to direct credit, it apparently accomplished nothing of the sort. It did not block domestic rivals to banks successfully, did not insulate the market from international forces, and did not set maximum interest rates that bound. Using evidence on loans to all 1,000‐odd firms listed on Section 1 of the Tokyo Stock Exchange from 1968 to 1982, we find that observed interest rates reflected borrower risk and mortgageable assets and that banks did not use low‐interest deposits to circumvent any interest caps. Instead, the loan market seems to have cleared at the nominal rates. We follow our empirical inquiry with a case study of the industry to which the government tried hardest to direct credit: ocean shipping. We find no evidence of credit rationing. Despite the government programs to allocate capital, nonconformist firms funded their projects readily outside authorized avenues. Indeed, they funded them so readily that the nonconformists grew with spectacular speed and earned their investors enormous returns.

Date: 2004
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1430-9134.2004.00008.x

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:jemstr:v:13:y:2004:i:1:p:171-205

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... ref=1058-6407&site=1

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Economics & Management Strategy from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:bla:jemstr:v:13:y:2004:i:1:p:171-205