In Search of "Capital Crunch": Supply Factors Behind the Credit Slowdown in Japan

The seeming failure of loose monetary policy to reactivate Japan's economy has led some observers to suggest that the usual credit channels through which monetary policy affects the real economy are blocked, and this is because of a pervasive shortage of bank capital that has induced a leftward shift in the supply of bank credit. This is the so-called capital crunch hypothesis. This paper finds support for the hypothesis in the bank data for 1997--a year during which the landscape of the Japanese financial system underwent some fundamental changes.