How Do Relationship Lenders Price Loans to Small Firms?: "Hold-Up" Costs, Transparency, and Private and Public Security

We conduct a comprehensive examination on how relationship lenders price loans to small opaque firms using the rich matched data set of Japanese firms and their main banks. Our major findings are: 1. Neither measures for a borrower firm's transparency to the public (outsiders) nor measures for the firm's transparency to its main bank affect the lending rate. 2. A bank suffering from a greater ratio of non-performing loans to total asset charges a higher lending rate. 3. Treating the non-price terms of a loan contract as endogenous variables is crucial in consistently estimating the lending rate.