Banking crises and the lender of last resort: How crucial is the role of information?

Hassan Naqvi

Journal of Banking & Finance, 2015, vol. 54, issue C, 20-29

Abstract: This article develops a model that studies how the presence of a lender of last resort (LOLR) affects the ex ante investment incentives of banks. We show that a perfectly informed LOLR induces a first-best outcome for small and medium sized banks but causes moral hazard in larger banks given the high contagion cost of their failure. On the other hand, an imperfectly informed LOLR causes allocational inefficiencies in the investment decisions of smaller banks but mitigates the moral hazard problem in larger banks due to the constructive ambiguity nature of bail-outs when the LOLR’s information set is noisy. Policy implications include stricter supervision for smaller banks, and “buffer” requirements complemented with liquidity provision at penalty rates for larger banks.

Keywords: Bank runs; Lender of last resort; Moral hazard (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E58 G21 G28 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378426615000059
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jbfina:v:54:y:2015:i:c:p:20-29

DOI: 10.1016/j.jbankfin.2015.01.004

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Banking & Finance is currently edited by Ike Mathur

More articles in Journal of Banking & Finance from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().