2004), “Managing Confidence in Emerging Market Bank Runs

This Working Paper should not be reported as representing the views of the IMF. The views expressed in this Working Paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the IMF or IMF policy. Working Papers describe research in progress by the author(s) and are published to elicit comments and to further debate. In a rational-expectations framework, we model depositors ’ confidence as a function of the probability of future bank bailouts. We analyze the effect of alternative bank bailout policies on depositors ’ confidence in an emerging market setting, where liquidity shortages of banks are revealed sequentially and governments cannot credibly commit to bailing out all potentially distressed banks. Our findings suggest that allowing early bank failures and using available liquidity for credible commitments to later bailouts can better boost confidence than early bailouts. This conclusion arises because with a high chance of liquidity shortage in the future, depositors may lose confidence and hence withdraw deposits even from potentially sound banks. Such a policy of late bailouts is likely to receive political support when a full bailout needs to be financed by taxation. The logic of late bailout remains valid even whe