IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ris/adbewp/0314.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Ending "Too Big To Fail": Government Promises versus Investor Perceptions

Author

Listed:
  • Gormley, Todd A.

    (Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania)

  • Johnson, Simon

    (Sloan School of Management)

  • Rhee, Changyong

    (Asian Development Bank)

Abstract

Can a government credibly promise not to bailout firms whose failure would have major negative systemic consequences? Our analysis of the Republic of Korea’s 1997–1999 crisis, suggests an answer: No. Despite a general “no bailout” policy during the crisis, the largest Korean corporate groups (chaebol)―facing severe financial and governance problems―could still borrow heavily from households through issuing bonds at prices implying very low expected default risk. The evidence suggests “too big to fail” beliefs were not eliminated by government promises, presumably because investors believed that this policy was not time consistent. Subsequent government handling of potential and actual defaults by Daewoo and Hyundai confirmed the market view that creditors would be protected.

Suggested Citation

  • Gormley, Todd A. & Johnson, Simon & Rhee, Changyong, 2012. "Ending "Too Big To Fail": Government Promises versus Investor Perceptions," ADB Economics Working Paper Series 314, Asian Development Bank.
    • Handle: RePEc:ris:adbewp:0314
    Note: http://www.adb.org/sites/default/files/pub/2012/economics-wp314.pdf
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    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. Randall Morck & Bernard Yeung, 2017. "East Asian Financial and Economic Development," Working Papers id:12112, eSocialSciences.
    2. Bereskin, Frederick L. & Kim, Bushik & Oh, Frederick Dongchuhl, 2015. "Do credit rating concerns lead to better corporate governance? Evidence from Korea," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 35(PB), pages 592-608.
    3. Ducret, Romain & Isakov, Dušan, 2020. "The Korea discount and chaebols," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 63(C).
    4. Chirinko, Robert, 2023. "What went wrong? The Puerto Rican debt crisis, the “Treasury Put,” and the failure of market discipline," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).
    5. Ducret, Romain, 2021. "Investors' perception of business group membership during an economic crisis : Evidence from the COVID-19 pandemic," FSES Working Papers 524, Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences, University of Freiburg/Fribourg Switzerland.
    6. Ducret, Romain & Isakov, Dušan, 2023. "Business group heterogeneity and firm outcomes: Evidence from Korean chaebols," FSES Working Papers 531, Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences, University of Freiburg/Fribourg Switzerland.
    7. Dong, Yi & Hou, Qiannan & Ni, Chenkai, 2021. "Implicit government guarantees and credit ratings," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 69(C).
    8. Viswanathan Nagarajan & Pitabas Mohanty & Apalak Khatua, 2023. "Financing effects of corporate diversification: A review," Review of Managerial Science, Springer, vol. 17(7), pages 2555-2585, October.
    9. Attaoui, Sami & Poncet, Patrice, 2015. "Write-Down Bonds and Capital and Debt Structures," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 35(C), pages 97-119.
    10. Gao, Haoyu & Ru, Hong & Tang, Dragon Yongjun, 2021. "Subnational debt of China: The politics-finance nexus," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 141(3), pages 881-895.
    11. Vo, Hong & Phan, Anh & Trinh, Quoc-Dat & Vu, Linh Nhat, 2022. "Does economic policy uncertainty affect trade credit and firm value in Korea? A comparison of chaebol vs. non-chaebol firms," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 474-491.

    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:ris:adbewp:0314. 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: Orlee Velarde (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/eradbph.html .

    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.