DETERIORATING BANK HEALTH AND LENDING IN JAPAN : EVIDENCE FROM UNLISTED COMPANIES UNDERGOING FINANCIAL DISTRESS

当借款人面临信息滞留问题时，不断恶化的银行健康状况可能会减少借款人的信贷可获得性。然而，一家资产负债表受损的银行可能会试图“为复苏而赌博”，从而增加对“僵尸”企业的高风险贷款。本文的目的是调查银行疲软的财务状况对日本中型企业未偿还贷款的影响。通过估计贷款函数，我们考察了在20世纪90年代末和21世纪初向未上市的日本公司提供贷款的决定因素。我们发现，衡量银行健康状况的两个替代指标--监管资本充足率和不良贷款率--对放贷产生了相反的影响。就监管资本充足率而言，其恶化对放贷产生了反常的影响。然而，不断恶化的不良贷款率增加了对陷入困境的公司的贷款，以维持原本在经济上破产的公司的生存。

When a borrower faces an informational hold-up problem, deteriorating bank health might reduce a borrower's credit availability. However, a bank with an impaired balance sheet might attempt to "gamble for resurrection" and hence increase risky lending to "zombie" firms. The purpose of this paper is to investigate what impacts the weakened financial conditions of banks had on loans outstanding to medium-size firms in Japan. Estimating lending functions, we examine the determinants of lending to unlisted Japanese companies in the late 1990s and early 2000s. We find that two alternative measures of bank health-regulatory capital adequacy ratios and ratios of non-performing loans (NPLs)-had opposite impacts on lending. In the case of regulatory capital adequacy ratios, its deterioration had a perverse impact on lending. The deteriorating NPL ratios, however, increased lending to troubled firms to keep otherwise economically bankrupt firms alive.