Search Results
Working Paper
Risk-Shifting, Regulation, and Government Assistance
This paper examines an episode when policy response to a financial crisis effectively incentivized financial institutions to reallocate their portfolios toward safe assets. Following a shift to a regime of enhanced regulation and scaled-down public assistance during the savings and loan crisis in 1989, I find that thrifts with a high probability of failure increased their composition of safe assets relative to thrifts with a low probability of failure. The findings also show a shift to safe assets among stock thrifts relative to mutual thrifts, thereby providing evidence of risk-shifting from ...
Working Paper
Assessing Regulatory Responses to Banking Crises
During banking crises, regulators must decide between bailouts or liquidations, neither of which are publicly popular. However, making a comprehensive assessment of regulators requires examining all their decisions against their dual objectives of preserving financial stability and discouraging moral hazard. I develop a Bayesian latent class model to assess regulators on these competing objectives and evaluate banking and savings and loan (S&L) regulators during the 1980s crises. I find that the banking authority (FDIC) conformed to these objectives whereas the S&L regulator (FSLIC), which ...