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Incentive Effects of Benevolent Intervention - The case of government loan guarantees

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Author Info
Paul K. Chaney (Vanderbilt University)
Anjan V. Thakor (Washington University in St. Louis)

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Abstract

There has been a substantial recent growth in government loan guarantees to ailing firms in the United States. This paper investigates the potential incentive effects of this practice. Using the simplest available two-period model, it is shown that when firms know that loan guarantees may be forthcoming, they may be induced to adopt riskier investments and take on more leverage. These perverse incentive effects imply that the actual loan-guarantees-related contingent liability of the government could be much larger than suspected. Our policy recommendation is that the government either abandon the practice altogether or set up a federal agency that sells loan guarantees to all firms at prices that depend on the riskiness of the firm's assets and its leverage.

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Paper provided by EconWPA in its series Finance with number 0411047.

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Length: 21 pages
Date of creation: 30 Nov 2004
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Handle: RePEc:wpa:wuwpfi:0411047

Note: Type of Document - pdf; pages: 21
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G - Financial Economics

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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.:
  1. Ross, Stephen A, 1973. "The Economic Theory of Agency: The Principal's Problem," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 63(2), pages 134-39, May. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  2. Steven Shavell, 1979. "Risk Sharing and Incentives in the Principal and Agent Relationship," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 10(1), pages 55-73, Spring. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  3. Joseph E. Stiglitz, 1972. "Some Aspects of the Pure Theory of Corporate Finance: Bankruptcies and Take-Overs," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 3(2), pages 458-482, Autumn. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  4. Bengt Holmstrom, 1979. "Moral Hazard and Observability," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 10(1), pages 74-91, Spring. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  5. Heinkel, Robert, 1982. " A Theory of Capital Structure Relevance under Imperfect Information," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 37(5), pages 1141-50, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  6. Kraus, Alan & Litzenberger, Robert H, 1973. "A State-Preference Model of Optimal Financial Leverage," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 28(4), pages 911-22, September. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  7. Ramakrishnan, Ram T S & Thakor, Anjan V, 1984. " The Valuation of Assets under Moral Hazard," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 39(1), pages 229-38, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  8. Harris, Milton & Raviv, Artur, 1979. "Optimal incentive contracts with imperfect information," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 20(2), pages 231-259, April. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  9. Sosin, Howard B, 1980. " On the Valuation of Federal Loan Guarantees to Corporations," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 35(5), pages 1209-21, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  10. Bengt Holmstrom, 1982. "Moral Hazard in Teams," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 13(2), pages 324-340, Autumn. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  11. Myers, Stewart C., 1977. "Determinants of corporate borrowing," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 5(2), pages 147-175, November. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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Cited by:
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  1. Salman Shah & Anjan V. Thakor, 2004. "Optimal Capital Structure and Project Financing," Finance 0411041, EconWPA. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  2. Fohlin, Caroline, 1998. "Financing Decisions and Corporate Capital Structure in the Later Stages of the German Industrialization," Working Papers 1030, California Institute of Technology, Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences. [Downloadable!]
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