RISK SHARING BETWEEN A MAIN BANK AND BORROWING COMPANIES UNDER INDEXED CONTRACTS

This paper investigates whether there has been risk sharing between a main bank and borrowing companies in Japan. Horiuchi, et al. (1988) claim that systematic relationships indicating the existence of risk-sharing between them cannot be generally observed. However, contracts conditional on operating profits as in Horiuchi, et al. (1988) may not be feasible because of the moral hazard problem. As Christopher (1982) suggests, indexed contracts are one way to circumvent the moral hazard Here, an optimal indexed contract involving risk sharing is derived, and is shown to be consistent with the behavior of com paniesin the Japanese chemical industry.