IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/pubeco/v26y1985i2p169-189.html

Incentive effects of benevolent intervention : The case of government loan guarantees

Author

Listed:
  • Chaney, Paul K.
  • Thakor, Anjan V.

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.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Chaney, Paul K. & Thakor, Anjan V., 1985. "Incentive effects of benevolent intervention : The case of government loan guarantees," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(2), pages 169-189, March.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:pubeco:v:26:y:1985:i:2:p:169-189
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0047-2727(85)90003-9
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or

    for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Zhu, Xiaoquan & Peng, Hongfeng & Zhang, Zijian, 2020. "The nexus of judicial efficiency, social burden and default risk: Cross-country evidence," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 68(C).
    2. Akcigit, Ufuk & Seven, Ünal & Yarba, İbrahim & Yılmaz, Fatih, 2024. "Firm-level impact of public credit guarantees," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 170(C).
    3. William G. Gale, 1987. "The Allocational and Welfare Effects of Federal Credit Programs: A Summary," UCLA Economics Working Papers 460, UCLA Department of Economics.
    4. Duchin, Ran & Sosyura, Denis, 2014. "Safer ratios, riskier portfolios: Banks׳ response to government aid," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 113(1), pages 1-28.
    5. Gao, Jieqiong & Ghosh, Chinmoy, 2024. "The longer-term impact of TARP on banks’ default risk," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 95(C), pages 346-357.
    6. Boadway, Robin & Marceau, Nicolas & Marchand, Maurice, 1996. "Time-consistent subsidies to unlucky firms," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 11(4), pages 619-634, April.
    7. James D. Hamilton, 2013. "Off-Balance-Sheet Federal Liabilities," NBER Working Papers 19253, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Olivier Debande, 1997. "Le rôle du secteur privé dans le financement des infrastructures : une mise en perspective historique," Revue Économique, Programme National Persée, vol. 48(2), pages 197-230.
    9. Iichiro Uesugi & Koji Sakai & Guy M. Yamashiro, 2006. "Effectiveness of Credit Guarantees in the Japanese Loan Market," Discussion papers 06004, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).
    10. Kartik B. Athreya & Xuan S. Tam & Eric Young, 2014. "Loan Guarantees for Consumer Credit Markets," Economic Quarterly, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, issue 4Q, pages 297-352.
    11. Edina Berlinger & Anita Lovas & Péter Juhász, 2017. "State subsidy and moral hazard in corporate financing," Central European Journal of Operations Research, Springer;Slovak Society for Operations Research;Hungarian Operational Research Society;Czech Society for Operations Research;Österr. Gesellschaft für Operations Research (ÖGOR);Slovenian Society Informatika - Section for Operational Research;Croatian Operational Research Society, vol. 25(4), pages 743-770, December.
    12. Cowan, Kevin & Drexler, Alejandro & Yañez, Álvaro, 2015. "The effect of credit guarantees on credit availability and delinquency rates," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 98-110.
    13. Banai, Ádám & Lang, Péter & Nagy, Gábor & Stancsics, Martin, 2020. "Waste of money or growth opportunity: The causal effect of EU subsidies on Hungarian SMEs," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 44(1).
    14. Alaa Soliman & Mohammad Aliu Momoh & Ibrahim L. Awad, 2017. "Infrastructure Guarantees: Making It Simple," Economic Studies journal, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences - Economic Research Institute, issue 1, pages 178-202.
    15. Wilson, Linus & Wu, Yan Wendy, 2018. "Overpaid CEOs got FDIC debt guarantees," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 101-115.
    16. Linus Wilson & Yan Wu, 2010. "Common (stock) sense about risk-shifting and bank bailouts," Financial Markets and Portfolio Management, Springer;Swiss Society for Financial Market Research, vol. 24(1), pages 3-29, March.
    17. Dailami, Mansoor & Kim, E. Han, 1991. "The effects of debt subsidies on corporate investment behavior," Policy Research Working Paper Series 727, The World Bank.
    18. Soumaré, Issouf & Lai, Van Son, 2016. "An analysis of government loan guarantees and direct investment through public-private partnerships," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 508-519.
    19. Shah, Salman & Thakor, Anjan V., 1987. "Optimal capital structure and project financing," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 42(2), pages 209-243, August.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:pubeco:v:26:y:1985:i:2:p:169-189. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/505578 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.