This paper empirically investigates the effect of government bail-out policies on banks outside the safety net. We construct a measure of bail-out perceptions by using rating information. From there, we construct the market shares of insured competitor banks for any given bank, and analyze the impact of this variable on banks' risk-taking behavior, using a large sample of banks from OECD countries. Our results suggest that government guarantees strongly increase the risk-taking of competitor banks. In contrast, there is no evidence that public guarantees increase the protected banks' risk-taking, except for banks that have outright public ownership. These results have important implications for the effects of the recent wave of bank bail-outs on banks' risk-taking behavior.JEL: G21, G28, L53.
Using information on banks' balance sheets, I analyze the causal links between the banking and currency problems in the German crisis of 1931. I find that the crisis had two independent causes: Political shocks triggered a run on the Reichsmark; and the excessive risk-taking by banks that were “too big to fail” led to a run on banks. Due to the high level of foreign debt in the banking system, the run on the currency and the deposit withdrawals reinforced each other in a vicious circle and resulted in a banking panic and the abandonment of the gold standard.
Abstract:The explicit or implicit protection of banks through government bail-out policies is a universal phenomenon. We analyze the competitive effects of such policies in two models with different degrees of transparency in the banking sector. Our main result is that the bail-out policy unambiguously leads to higher risk-taking at those banks that do not enjoy a bail-out guarantee. The reason is that the prospect of a bail-out induces the protected bank to expand, thereby intensifying competition in the deposit market and depressing other banks' margins. In contrast, the effects on the protected bank's risk-taking and on welfare depend on the transparency of the banking sector.
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