This paper provides empirical evidence on the impact of deposit insurance on financial development and stability, broadly defined to include the level of banking activity and the stability of the banking sector. We use a unique dataset capturing a variety of deposit insurance features across countries, such as coverage, premium structure, etc., and synthesize available information by means of principal component indices. This paper specifically addresses sample selection concerns by estimating a generalized Tobit model both via maximum likelihood and the Heckman two-step method. The empirical construct is guided by recent theories of banking regulation that employ an agency framework. The basic moral hazard problem is the incentive for depository institutions to engage in excessively high-risk activities, relative to socially optimal outcomes, in order to increase the option value of their deposit insurance guarantee. The overall empirical evidence is consistent with the likelihood that generous government-funded deposit insurance might have a negative impact on financial development and growth in the long run, except in countries where the rule of law is well established and bank supervisors are granted sufficient discretion and independence from legal reprisals. Insurance premium requirements on member banks, even when risk-adjusted, are instead found to have little effect in restraining banks' risk-taking behavior.
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Volume (Year): 37 (2005) Issue (Month): 1 (February) Pages: 43-82 Download reference. The following formats are available: HTML
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References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Douglas W. Diamond & Raghuram G. Rajan, 1999.
"A Theory of Bank Capital,"
NBER Working Papers
7431, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
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Douglas W. Diamond & Raghuram G. Rajan, .
"A Theory of Bank Capital,"
CRSP working papers
363, Center for Research in Security Prices, Graduate School of Business, University of Chicago.
Douglas W. Diamond & Raghuram G. Rajan, 2000.
"A Theory of Bank Capital,"
Journal of Finance,
American Finance Association, vol. 55(6), pages 2431-2465, December.
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Rafael La Porta & Florencio Lopez-de-Silanes & Andrei Shleifer & Robert W. Vishny, 1998.
"Law and Finance,"
Journal of Political Economy,
University of Chicago Press, vol. 106(6), pages 1113-1155, December.
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Rafael La Porta & Florencio Lopez-de-Silane & Andrei Shleifer & Robert W. Vishny, 1996.
"Law and Finance,"
NBER Working Papers
5661, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
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Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.) This item has more than 25 citations. To prevent cluttering this page, these citations are listed on a separate page.