← Search

Journal of Financial Stability Vol. 55 2021

Is bailout insurance and tail risk priced in bank equities?

Luca Del Viva; Eero Kasanen1,2; Anthony Saunders3; Lenos Trigeorgis4

1 Universitat Ramon Llull · 2 Aalto University · 3 New York University · 4 University of Cyprus

open access

Abstract

We present a pricing model of bank bailout insurance guarantees against tail risk and empirical evidence that provides a rational explanation why big bank equities “underperform” relative to small banks during normal times while they “overperform” during crises. A new measure accounting for left-tail risk protection against losses conditional on a crisis explains the “underperformance” of large banks during normal periods. Over the long-term spanning several economic cycles, bank assets are fairly priced regardless of size. Our empirical evidence supports our model’s predicted pattern of excess bank return reversals across economic cycles following Too-Big-To-Fail (TBTF) bailout policy in 1984.

DOI
10.1016/j.jfs.2021.100909
Volume
55
Pages
100909
Language
en
Sources
bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

Cite