Resource reallocation and zombie lending in Japan in the 1990s

Abstract

We investigate how resources were reallocated in Japan during the 1990s, a decade of economic recession, by measuring aggregate productivity growth (APG) using plant-level data of manufacturers from 1981 to 2000. We find that the contribution to APG of resource reallocation deteriorated in the 1990s and became negative during the late 1990s, when a financial crisis occurred. Matched firm-plant data suggest that misdirected lending by banks to failing firms (zombie lending) allowed them to avoid reducing production inputs, especially labor. Our counter-factual analysis using a general equilibrium model with heterogeneous plants indicates that without zombie lending, annual APG would have been higher by one percentage point during the 1990s.