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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
Do bank bailouts reduce or increase systemic risk? the effects of TARP on financial system stability
Theory suggests that bank bailouts may either reduce or increase systemic risk. This paper is the first to address this issue empirically, analyzing the U.S. Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP). Difference-in-difference analysis suggests that TARP significantly reduced contributions to systemic risk, particularly for larger and safer banks located in better local economies. This occurred primarily through a capital cushion channel. {{p}} Results are robust to additional tests, including accounting for potential endogeneity and selection bias. Findings yield policy conclusions about the ...
Working Paper
Collective Moral Hazard and the Interbank Market
The concentration of risk within financial system is considered to be a source of systemic instability. We propose a theory to explain the structure of the financial system and show how it alters the risk taking incentives of financial institutions. We build a model of portfolio choice and endogenous contracts in which the government optimally intervenes during crises. By issuing financial claims to other institutions, relatively risky institutions endogenously become large and interconnected. This structure enables institutions to share the risk of systemic crisis in a privately optimal way, ...
Working Paper
A Tale of Two Bailouts: Effects of TARP and PPP on Subprime Consumer Debt
High levels of subprime consumer debt can create social problems. We test the effects of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) and Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) bailouts during the Global Financial Crisis and COVID-19 crisis, respectively, on this debt. We use over 11 million credit bureau observations of individual consumer debt combined with banking, bailout, and local market data. We find that subprime consumers with more TARP institutions in their markets had significantly increased debt burdens following these bailouts. In contrast, PPP bailouts were associated with reduced ...
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
Efficient Bailouts?
We develop a quantitative equilibrium model of financial crises to assess the interaction between ex-post interventions in credit markets and the buildup of risk ex ante. During a systemic crisis, bailouts relax balance sheet constraints and mitigate the severity of the recession. Ex ante, the anticipation of such bailouts leads to an increase in risk-taking, making the economy more vulnerable to a financial crisis. We find that moral hazard effects are limited if bailouts are systemic and broad-based. If bailouts are idiosyncratic and targeted, however, this makes the economy significantly ...
Journal Article
The Distributional Effects of Bailouts
This article examines the distributional effects of government bailouts using a heterogeneous agent New Keynesian model with financial intermediation frictions. We analyze government equity injections to financial institutions financed by debt issuance, capturing essential features of bailout policies during financial crises. When calibrated to match key features of the U.S. economy, bailout policies are expansionary and reduce inequality through general equilibrium effects operating primarily via aggregate demand stimulation and increased labor income rather than direct wealth effects. ...
Report
Financial Safety Nets
In this paper, we study the optimal design of financial safety nets under limited private credit. We ask when it is optimal to restrict ex ante the set of investors that can receive public liquidity support ex post. When the government can commit, the optimal safety net covers all investors. Introducing a wedge between identical investors is inefficient. Without commitment, an optimally designed financial safety net covers only a subset of investors. Compared to an economy where all investors are protected, this results in more liquid portfolios, better social insurance, and higher ex ante ...
Journal Article
The 1970s Origins of Too Big to Fail
In 1972, bank regulators bailed out the $1.2 billion Bank of the Commonwealth partly because they viewed it as ?too big to fail.? We describe this bailout and subsequent ones through that of Continental Illinois in 1984 and use the descriptions to draw lessons about too-big-to-fail policy. We argue that some of the same issues that motivated bailouts during this earlier period, particularly worries about banking concentration, are relevant today.
Working Paper
Fiscal Multipliers and Financial Crises
What type of fiscal policy is most effective during a financial crisis? I study the macroeconomic effects of the US fiscal policy response to the Great Recession, accounting not only for standard tools such as government purchases and transfers but also for financial sector interventions such as bank recapitalizations and credit guarantees. A nonlinear quantitative model calibrated to the US allows me to study the state-dependent effects of different types of fiscal policies. I combine the model with data on the US fiscal policy response to find that the fall in aggregate consumption would ...