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Working Paper
Unexpected Effects of Bank Bailouts: Depositors Need Not Apply and Need Not Run
A key policy issue is whether bank bailouts weaken or strengthen market discipline. We address this by analyzing how bank bailouts influence deposit quantities and prices of recipients versus other banks. Using the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) bailouts, we find both deposit quantities and prices decline, consistent with substantially reduced demand for deposits by bailed-out banks that dominate market discipline supply effects. Main findings are robust to numerous checks and endogeneity tests. However, diving deeper into depositor heterogeneity suggests nuances. Increases in uninsured ...
Working Paper
Banking Regulation with Risk of Sovereign Default
Banking regulation routinely designates some assets as safe and thus does not require banks to hold any additional capital to protect against losses from these assets. A typical such safe asset is domestic government debt. There are numerous examples of banking regulation treating domestic government bonds as ?safe,? even when there is clear risk of default on these bonds. We show, in a parsimonious model, that this failure to recognize the riskiness of government debt allows (and induces) domestic banks to ?gamble? with depositors? funds by purchasing risky government bonds (and assets ...
Working Paper
Banking Regulation with Risk of Sovereign Default
Banking regulation routinely designates domestic government debt as safe, even when this debt is risky. We show, in a parsimonious model, that this failure to recognize the riskiness of government debt induces domestic banks to “gamble” with depositors’ funds by purchasing risky government bonds and assets correlated with them. Sovereign defaults then result in banking crises; however, by permitting banks to gamble, the regulator lowers the government’s borrowing costs ex-ante. Thus, the government has an incentive to ignore the riskiness of the sovereign bonds. We derive a set of ...