The political economy of bank bailouts

  • In this paper, we examine how the institutional design affects the outcome of bank bailout decisions. In the German savings bank sector, distress events can be resolved by local politicians or a state-level association. We show that decisions by local politicians with close links to the bank are distorted by personal considerations: While distress events per se are not related to the electoral cycle, the probability of local politicians injecting taxpayers’ money into a bank in distress is 30 percent lower in the year directly preceding an election. Using the electoral cycle as an instrument, we show that banks that are bailed out by local politicians experience less restructuring and perform considerably worse than banks that are supported by the savings bank association. Our findings illustrate that larger distance between banks and decision makers reduces distortions in the decision making process, which has implications for the design of bank regulation and supervision.

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Metadaten
Author:Markus Behn, Rainer HaselmannGND, Thomas KickORCiDGND, Vikrant Vig
URN:urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-400652
URL:http://safe-frankfurt.de/fileadmin/user_upload/editor_common/Research/Working_Paper/SAFE_WP_133.pdf
Parent Title (English):SAFE working paper series ; No. 133
Series (Serial Number):SAFE working paper (133)
Publisher:SAFE
Place of publication:Frankfurt am Main
Document Type:Working Paper
Language:English
Year of Completion:2016
Year of first Publication:2016
Publishing Institution:Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg
Release Date:2016/05/10
Tag:bailouts; elections; political economy; state-owned enterprises
Edition:April 14, 2016
Page Number:60
HeBIS-PPN:381274640
Institutes:Wirtschaftswissenschaften / Wirtschaftswissenschaften
Wissenschaftliche Zentren und koordinierte Programme / House of Finance (HoF)
Wissenschaftliche Zentren und koordinierte Programme / Center for Financial Studies (CFS)
Wissenschaftliche Zentren und koordinierte Programme / Sustainable Architecture for Finance in Europe (SAFE)
Dewey Decimal Classification:3 Sozialwissenschaften / 33 Wirtschaft / 330 Wirtschaft
Sammlungen:Universitätspublikationen
Licence (German):License LogoDeutsches Urheberrecht