Credit Allocation and Public Credit Guarantee Schemes for Small Businesses: Evidence from Japan

In this paper, we investigate the relationship between the use of a public credit guarantee scheme for small businesses and the efficiency of credit allocation using region- and industry-level data from Japan for the period from 1968 to 2005. Studies argue that credit constraints are more severe for small businesses than for large firms. Therefore, a public credit guarantee scheme that mitigates this constraint could enhance social welfare. If credit guaranteed loans were allocated to firms with high value added, the public credit guarantee scheme would enhance the efficiency of credit allocation. Conversely, however, public credit guarantee schemes can squeeze credit allocations for small businesses. When financial institutions offer loans through credit guarantee schemes, they can offer loans to small businesses at low risk to themselves, even though small businesses are high-risk borrowers, which may reduce the incentives of the financial institutions to monitor the activity of small business borrowers. In addition, because the public credit guarantee scheme in Japan is a component of a broader set of social policies aiming to eliminate inequality, credit guaranteed loans can be offered to economically distressed firms. We identify a negative relationship between the amount of credit guaranteed and the value added. Moreover, we find that the greater the amount of credit guaranteed loans offered to firms, the larger the default rate among small businesses. We show that the public credit guarantee scheme reduced the efficiency of credit allocations, which has implications for industry and regional growth.