A theory of government bailouts in a heterogeneous banking system

• Autor(a) principal: Garcia, Filomena
• Data de Publicação: 2017
• Outros Autores: Panetti, Ettore
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositórios Científicos de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (RCAAP)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.5/23953
• topic: Financial Intermediation; Bank Runs; Bailouts; Heterogeneous Agents; Global Games

How should a government bailout a heterogeneous banking system subject to systemic self-fulfilling runs? To answer this question, we develop a theory of banking with multiple groups of depositors of different size and wealth, where systemic self-fulfilling runs emerge as a consequence of a global game, and a government uses a public good to bailout banks through liquidity injections. In this framework, we characterize the endogenous probability of a systemic self-fulfilling run, and the conditions under which a full bailout cannot be part of the equilibrium. The optimal bailout strategy should target those banks whose bailout has the largest marginal impact on the probability of a systemic self-fulfilling run, and whose depositors are at the lower end of the wealth distribution.