Research Discussion Paper – RDP 2000-03 Some Structural Causes of Japan's Banking Problems
May 2000
Abstract
This paper reviews corporate finance literature which explains some of the long-term causes of the Japanese banking sector's poor performance in the early 1990s. It concentrates on the ideas that an adverse selection problem developed in the bank lending market during the 1980s, and that banks had strong incentives to seek out borrowers which were of lower quality and which had greater exposure to adverse movements in asset prices. Possible links between these hypotheses and the macroeconomic environment are also considered.