Working Paper: NBER ID: w18766
Authors: Jaromir Nosal; Guillermo Ordoez
Abstract: Time-inconsistency of no-bailout policies can create incentives for banks to take excessive risks and generate endogenous crises when the government cannot commit. However, at the outbreak of financial problems, usually the government is uncertain about their nature, and hence it may delay intervention to learn more about them. We show that intervention delay leads to strategic restraint banks endogenously restrict the riskiness of their portfolio relative to their peers in order to avoid being the worst performers and bearing the cost of such delay. These novel forces help to avoid endogenous crises even when the government cannot commit. We analyze the effect of government policies from the perspective of this new result.
Keywords: government uncertainty; financial crises; strategic restraint; bank risk-taking; bailouts
JEL Codes: D53; D81; D83; E44; G21; G33; G34
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Government uncertainty regarding the nature of financial crises (G01) | Intervention delays (C41) |
| Intervention delays (C41) | Banks engage in strategic restraint (G21) |
| Government uncertainty regarding the nature of financial crises (G01) | Banks engage in strategic restraint (G21) |