IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/fip/fedker/94766.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Government Assistance and Moral Hazard: Evidence from the Savings and Loan Crisis

Author

Abstract

When regulators intervene to rescue failing financial institutions, they may lead banks to expect future assistance and increase their risk-taking. To avoid incentivizing risky behavior, regulators often try to signal that they will not assist banks in a future crisis. Regulations passed during the savings and loan (S&L) crisis in the 1980s provide a rare example of policies that in fact discouraged risk-taking. After a wave of S&L failures, the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation (FSLIC) liquidated or sold some failed S&Ls but assisted others to keep them in operation. In 1989, however, the FSLIC closed. A new regulatory agency was prohibited from assisting failed institutions, which signaled the suspension of future assistance. Padma Sharma examines how suspending assistance to failed S&Ls in 1989 affected the balance sheets of operational S&Ls. She finds that S&Ls responded to the change in policy differently depending on ownership structure: stock S&Ls increased their composition of safe assets relative to mutual S&Ls. If government assistance had remained feasible, stock S&Ls likely would have continued taking risks, lending an additional $2.14 billion and reducing their holdings of securities by $4.5 billion. In contrast, mutual S&Ls did not engage in excessive risk-taking even when government assistance was feasible, so they had little incentive to further reduce risk-taking when assistance was suspended.

Suggested Citation

  • Padma Sharma, 2022. "Government Assistance and Moral Hazard: Evidence from the Savings and Loan Crisis," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, vol. 107(no.3), August.
  • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedker:94766
    DOI: 10.18651/ER/v107n3Sharma
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.kansascityfed.org/Economic%20Review/documents/8961/EconomicReviewVol107N3Sharma.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.18651/ER/v107n3Sharma?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Cordella, Tito & Yeyati, Eduardo Levy, 2003. "Bank bailouts: moral hazard vs. value effect," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 12(4), pages 300-330, October.
    2. Phoebe White & Tanju Yorulmazer, 2014. "Bank resolution concepts, trade-offs, and changes in practices," Economic Policy Review, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, issue Dec, pages 153-173.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Lammertjan Dam & Michael Koetter, 2011. "Bank bailouts, interventions, and moral hazard," Proceedings 1131, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
    2. Gropp, Reint E. & Köhler, Matthias, 2010. "Bank owners or bank managers: who is keen on risk? Evidence from the financial crisis," ZEW Discussion Papers 10-013, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    3. Gao, Jieqiong & Ghosh, Chinmoy, 2024. "The longer-term impact of TARP on banks’ default risk," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 95(C), pages 346-357.
    4. Schnabel, Isabel & Weder di Mauro, Beatrice & Schäfer, Alexander, 2016. "Bail-in Expectations for European Banks: Actions Speak Louder than Words," CEPR Discussion Papers 11061, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    5. Gabriel Jiménez & Steven Ongena & José‐Luis Peydró & Jesús Saurina, 2014. "Hazardous Times for Monetary Policy: What Do Twenty‐Three Million Bank Loans Say About the Effects of Monetary Policy on Credit Risk‐Taking?," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 82(2), pages 463-505, March.
    6. Sophie Claeys, & Gleb Lanine & Koen Schoors, 2005. "Bank Supervision Russian style: Rules versus Enforcement and Tacit Objectives," William Davidson Institute Working Papers Series wp778, William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan.
    7. White, Lucy & Walther, Ansgar, 2019. "Rules versus Discretion in Bank Resolution," CEPR Discussion Papers 14048, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    8. Rafael Repullo, 2005. "Liquidity, Risk Taking, and the Lender of Last Resort," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 1(2), September.
    9. Tito Cordella & Eduardo Levy Yeyati, 2005. "Country Insurance," IMF Staff Papers, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 52(si), pages 1-6.
    10. Koen Schoors & Konstantin Sonin, 2005. "Passive Creditors," International Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 8(1), pages 57-86, March.
    11. Poczter, Sharon, 2016. "The long-term effects of bank recapitalization: Evidence from Indonesia," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 25(C), pages 131-153.
    12. Viral V Acharya & Lea Borchert & Maximilian Jager & Sascha Steffen, 2021. "Kicking the Can Down the Road: Government Interventions in the European Banking Sector," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 34(9), pages 4090-4131.
    13. Itai Agur, 2009. "What Institutional Structure for the Lender of Last Resort?," DNB Working Papers 200, Netherlands Central Bank, Research Department.
    14. Mei Li & Frank Milne & Junfeng Qiu, 2022. "Central bank screening, moral hazard, and the lender of last resort policy," Journal of Banking Regulation, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 23(3), pages 244-264, September.
    15. Srivastav, Abhishek & Keasey, Kevin & Mollah, Sabur & Vallascas, Francesco, 2017. "CEO turnover in large banks: Does tail risk matter?," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(1), pages 37-55.
    16. Ma, Chang & Nguyen, Xuan-Hai, 2021. "Too big to fail and optimal regulation," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 747-758.
    17. Eijffinger, Sylvester & Nijskens, Rob, 2012. "A dynamic analysis of bank bailouts and constructive ambiguity," CEPR Discussion Papers 8953, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    18. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/153e5es3a8988omf0qkf000ql2 is not listed on IDEAS
    19. Viral V. Acharya & Lea Borchert & Maximilian Jager & Sascha Steffen, 2023. "Kicking the Can Down the Road: Government Interventions in the European Banking Sector," CRC TR 224 Discussion Paper Series crctr224_2023_446, University of Bonn and University of Mannheim, Germany.
    20. Poghosyan, Tigran & Werger, Charlotte & de Haan, Jakob, 2016. "Size and support ratings of US banks," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 236-247.
    21. Iftekhar Hasan & Matej Marinč, 2016. "Should competition policy in banking be amended during crises? Lessons from the EU," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 42(2), pages 295-324, October.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Financial institutions; Savings and loans crisis;

    JEL classification:

    • G20 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - General
    • G21 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Banks; Other Depository Institutions; Micro Finance Institutions; Mortgages

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fip:fedker:94766. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Zach Kastens (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbkcus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.