Bailouts, Bail-ins and Banking Crises

We study the interaction between a government's bailout policy during a bank- ing crisis and individual banks' willingness to impose losses on (or "bail in") their investors. Banks in our model hold risky assets and are able to write complete, state-contingent contracts with investors. In the constrained efficient allocation, banks experiencing a loss immediately bail in their investors and this bail-in removes any incentive for investors to run on the bank. In a competitive equi- librium, however, banks may not enact a bail-in if they anticipate being bailed out. In some cases, the decision not to bail in investors provokes a bank run, creating further distortions and leading to even larger bailouts. We ask what macroprudential policies are useful when bailouts crowd out bail-ins.