This paper examines the ramifications of government capital injections into financially distressed banks during the 1997 Japanese banking crisis. Using a dataset merging firm-level financial statements and bank balance sheets, we explore whether the capital injections primarily benefited high-productivity firms or were misallocated to struggling “zombie” firms. The results suggest that post-injection banks increased lending to high-productivity non-zombie and low-productivity zombie firms. The former aligns with conventional theories prioritizing high-productivity firms for investment and productivity enhancement; the latter suggests credit misallocation toward struggling firms mainly for debt servicing. There is no evidence that these injections promoted investments among firms. The results indicate that zombie firms reduced investments, particularly in infrastructure. High-productivity non-zombie firms did not exhibit a significant investment boost despite receiving more loans but displayed positive labor and total factor productivity growth, potentially driven by sales growth and increased advertisement expenses rather than employment and wage adjustments.

本文探讨了 1997 年日本银行业危机期间政府向陷入财务困境的银行注资的后果。使用合并公司级财务报表和银行资产负债表的数据集，我们探讨资本注入是否主要使高生产率公司受益，还是被错误分配给陷入困境的“僵尸”公司。结果表明，注资后银行增加了对高生产率非僵尸企业和低生产率僵尸企业的贷款。前者符合优先考虑高生产率企业进行投资和提高生产率的传统理论；后者表明信贷错配主要用于偿债陷入困境的企业。没有证据表明这些注入促进了企业之间的投资。结果表明，僵尸企业减少了投资，尤其是基础设施投资。高生产率的非僵尸企业尽管获得了更多贷款，但并未表现出显着的投资增长，但显示出劳动力和全要素生产率的积极增长，这可能是由销售增长和广告费用增加而不是就业和工资调整推动的。