Effects of Lending Relationships with Government Banks on Firm Performance: Evidence from Japan's Government Bank for Small Businesses

Iichiro Uesugi, Hirofumi Uchida and Yuta Mizusugi

Economic Review, 2016, vol. 67, issue 3, 238-260

Abstract: Employing massive contract- and firm-level data provided by the SME Unit of the Japan Finance Corporation (JFC), one of the largest government lending institutions for SMEs, and linking the data with other firm-level data from a business credit information company, we empirically examine (1) the lending behavior of JFC to SMEs and (2) the effects JFC's lending had on the credit availability and the ex-post performance of its borrowers. As for (1), JFC's lending behavior, we find (1-a) a statistically significant association between JFC's lending decision and a variety of variables including those from borrowers' financial statements, and (1-b) JFC's counter-cyclical lending behavior to SMEs. As for (2), effects of JFC's lending, we find (2-a) a significant positive impact on borrowers' credit availability, capital investment, and employment, (2-b) occasional complementarities between JFC loans and loans provided by other financial institutions, and (2-c) no definitive evidence for a positive impact on the borrowers' ex-post performance including their profitability and the probabilities of their financial distress.

JEL-codes: G21 G28 H81 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hit:ecorev:v:67:y:2016:i:3:p:238-260

DOI: 10.15057/28096

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