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Too big to fail, but a lot to bail: Optimal financing of large bailouts

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  • Stavros Panageas

    (University of Chicago, Booth School of Business and NBER)

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    Abstract

    The termination of a representative financial firm due to excess leverage may lead to substantial bankruptcy costs. A benevolent government in the tradition of Ramsey (1927) may be inclined to provide transfers to the firm so as to prevent its liquidation and the associated deadweight costs. The paper studies the optimal way to finance such a “bailout” with distortionary taxes and obtains two results. First, some degree of “fiscal stimulus” through procyclical taxation (low taxes in bad times, high taxes in good times) is always optimal. This is true even when markets are complete and government expenditure is set to zero. Second, taxes exhibit history dependence, even in a complete market. These results are in contrast with pre-existing results in the literature on optimal fiscal policy, and are driven by the endogeneity of the transfer payments that are required to salvage the financial firm. The paper also considers extensions whereby bailouts are financed partly by diluting existing shareholders, or by obtaining a fraction of the capital of the underlying company, and discusses the relative merits of these alternatives.

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    File URL: http://www.economicdynamics.org/meetpapers/2009/paper_175.pdf
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    Bibliographic Info

    Paper provided by Society for Economic Dynamics in its series 2009 Meeting Papers with number 175.

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    Date of creation: 2009
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    Handle: RePEc:red:sed009:175

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    1. Hayne E. Leland., 1998. "Agency Costs, Risk Management, and Capital Structure," Research Program in Finance Working Papers RPF-278, University of California at Berkeley.
    2. Robert E. Lucas Jr. & Nancy L. Stokey, 1982. "Optimal Fiscal and Monetary Policy in an Economy Without Capital," Discussion Papers 532, Northwestern University, Center for Mathematical Studies in Economics and Management Science.
    3. Lucas, Robert E, Jr, 1978. "Asset Prices in an Exchange Economy," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 46(6), pages 1429-45, November.
    4. Stavros Panageas, 2009. "Bailouts, the Incentive to Manage Risk, and Financial Crises," NBER Working Papers 15058, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Anastasios G. Karantounias, 2009. "Ramsey Taxation and fear of misspecification," 2009 Meeting Papers 822, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    6. Lars Ljungqvist & Thomas J. Sargent, 2004. "Recursive Macroeconomic Theory, 2nd Edition," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 2, volume 1, number 026212274x.
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