Uncertainty as commitment

When governments cannot commit to not providing bailouts, banks may take excessive risks and generate crises. At the outbreak of a financial crisis, however, governments are usually uncertain about its systemic nature, and may delay intervention to learn more from endogenous market outcomes. We show such delay introduces strategic restraint: banks restrict their portfolio riskiness relative to their peers to avoid being the worst performers and bearing the costs of delay. Hence, uncertainty has the potential to self-discipline banks and mitigate crises in the absence of commitment. We study the effects of standard regulations on these novel forces.