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Abstract
This is the first study that presents detailed information on the Chinese renminbi (RMB) invoiced trade between Malawi and Asian countries. By processing the unpublished customs level data on Malawi’s imports at the HS8-digit level, we show that the RMB is rarely used in Malawi’s imports from China, while more than 20% of Malawi’s imports from Japan are invoiced in the yen. This evidence suggests that the internationalization of the RMB lags far behind yen internationalization. The U.S. dollar and, to a lesser extent, the South African Rand are used as a vehicle currency in Malawi’s imports from Asian countries. By estimating a panel logit model, we demonstrate that product differentiation and market share of imported products have positive influences on yen invoiced imports from Japan, while bilateral nominal exchange rate volatility has negative effects on exporter currency invoicing in imports from Asian countries. Thus, we may say that stable exchange rates will be able to promote the exporter’s currency invoicing instead of vehicle currency invoicing in Malawi’s imports from Asian countries.

Abstract
This study introduces a new theory of money that can explain the ancient system of commodity money, the convertible and fiat systems of paper money, and the system of virtual currencies, in a unified manner. The key factor that underlies this theory is trust in money, which is built into the model in this study. The study demonstrates that the history of money can be thought of as a process that economizes transaction costs which builds trust in money and currencies. If an ideal blockchain is developed, it may replace the current monetary system of paper money and deposit money for which trust is provided by the central authorities. That will be possible if the decentralized system of blockchain-based money can sufficiently economize the transaction costs that are necessary to maintain the current centralized system of money.

Abstract
We propose a two-state Markov-switching version of the Frankel and Wei (MS-FW) model to assess Asian exchange rate policies during the period from August 2005 to August 2016. We impose coefficient constraints on FW coefficients to detect floating and pegging episodes against the main anchor currencies, such as the U.S. Dollar (USD), Renminbi (RMB), Euro, Japanese Yen and Asian Currency Unit. After estimating episodes where Asian currencies co-move with international currencies, we link the estimated regime probabilities to a set of economic fundamentals of Asian countries to identify the determinants of exchange rate regimes in Asia. We reveal that most Asian countries tend to constantly adjust the weight of their currency basket. When Asian countries loosen their peg against the USD, these currencies tend to increase their correlation with the RMB. However, the soft USD peg regime has a longer duration in most Asian countries, while the regime with a large RMB weight tends to be of shorter duration. Finally, we show that China’s trade dependence is a key factor in pegging Asian currencies to RMB, though export similarity with China does not necessarily facilitate the RMB regime.

Abstract
We investigate differences in the use of credit guarantees among banks by using a bank-firm matched dataset from Japan. By following Khwaja and Mian (2008) to control for borrower characteristics and the supply factors of guarantees using firm fixed effects, we extract the part of the ratio of guaranteed loans to total loans that depends solely on banks’ factors for the demand for guarantees. We find significant differences in this after-control ratio for some banks, and the distribution of the ratio is significantly different from that of an uncontrolled ratio based on publicly available data. We further find that the controlled ratio does not depend on the financial conditions of the respective banks such as the capital ratio of the banks, which indicates that other observable and/or unobservable bank characteristics determine these differences in the use of credit guarantees across banks.

Abstract
This paper investigates how additional credit supply affects the growth of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) by looking at a unique policy-based, small business lending program in Japan. Combining the loan-level data provided by the Japan Finance Corporation with the financial statement database for SMEs, we compare outcomes between SMEs receiving the loan (treated group) and SMEs not receiving the loan (control group). We find that policy-based credit supply increases investment and employment, which results in a higher long-run growth rate of SMEs. SMEs increase their asset value and hire more employees immediately after the credit supply and the effects stay persistent over years. On the other hand, sales increases gradually over years, which suggests that the credit supply changes the growth rate of SMEs, though we cannot detect any improvement in labor productivity. The persistent differences in long- and short-term loans between treated and control groups may suggest that SMEs are indeed credit constrained and face difficulty finding alternative financing sources.

Abstract
The purpose of this study is to analyze the factors that promote the usage of local currencies in Japanese trade in Asia by utilizing a large-scale firm-level questionnaire survey in 2018 on Japanese overseas subsidiaries in Asia and to discover why the usage of Asian currencies has increased recently.
The major findings are as follows: first, with respect to the choice of invoicing currency, subsidiaries with large sales tended to choose the U.S. dollar while those with small sales tended to choose the yen or local currency; second, subsidiaries established for sales to the local market tended to choose the local currency; third, overseas subsidiaries tended to unify the transaction currency on both the import and export sides, a practice called the natural hedge; fourth, subsidiaries with large local currency borrowing, a high share of local procurement, and a joint venture with local firms who try to maximize their profits measured using local currency, tend to adopt local currency invoicing. These results suggest that the role of the U.S. dollar as the main invoice currency is in decline, as Japanese exporting firms move away from using Asian subsidiaries as a platform to export to the United States and increasingly use Asian subsidiaries as a local sales base in Asian countries and an export platform to China and back to Japan.

Abstract

Since the burst of the bubble economy in the early 1990s, the stock and real estate prices collapsed in Japan. Among financial institutions, city banks were impacted the most. As a result, city banks reduced lending markedly, whereas regional banks kept credit flowing to borrowers. We use the plant-level data from the manufacturing sector to examine how regional differences in the share of city banks influenced plant survival. Using the historic share of city banks for each prefecture, we show that survival rates of plants in the mid-1990s were significantly lower in the prefectures with a high share of city banks. However, prefectures that underwent aggressive restructuring of city banks saw no improvements in employment and the prevalence of zombies as well as the reduction of regional markups and productivity.