To overcome the endogeneity problem, some studies treat declines in the availability of bank loans during a financial shock period as an exogenous shock. In this paper, we use an alternative identification strategy; namely, the exogenous change in the availability of bank loans resulting from the emergency credit guarantee (ECG) program established in Japan on October 31, 2008.5 Under the public credit guarantee program, local government-affiliated credit guarantee corporations offered credit guarantee services to credit-constrained small businesses in exchange for an annual credit guarantee fee of about 0.45% to 1.90%. The credit guarantee corporations then ensured the repayment of any defaulting guaranteed loans.