واکنش بازار به بانک مخاطره آمیز: آیا ضمانت سپرده گذاری آن را تغییر میدهد؟

Turkey experienced a massive banking crisis in February 2001, resulting in the loss of more than a thousand managerial jobs and the closure of 21% of all bank branches in the market. In this paper, we study the behavior of the market and the banks in Turkey before the crisis, from 1988 to 2000, which includes the period of full deposit insurance. The empirical results showed that not only depositors but also borrowers reacted negatively to risky banks and punished them even more during the period of generous government guarantee. However, in the same period, banks were found to increase their moral hazard behavior significantly. Although the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank recommend explicit deposit insurance for developing countries, the findings of this paper suggest that deposit insurance may not be an effective policy tool to improve market confidence, and it does not guarantee a stable economic environment even when the market reacts negatively to the moral hazard behavior of banks.

Governments have historically intervened extensively in the banking sector to promote financial stability. Often, their intervention policies have blocked some natural mechanisms and have resulted in undesired outcomes. One of those policies, government-sponsored deposit insurance, aims to maintain financial stability by minimizing the likelihood of bank runs. However, recent empirical evidence showed that explicit government guarantees reduced the market participation of depositors and adversely affected bank stability (Barth et al., 2004, Demirguc-Kunt and Detragiache, 2002 and Demirguc-Kunt and Huizinga, 2004). In this paper, we present contrary empirical evidence of declining market participation under explicit government guarantee to depositors. In volatile political and macroeconomic environments with insufficient regulations and poor supervision, the governments may lose their credibility. It can be argued that this loss of confidence in government motivates bank stakeholders1 to be more involved in disciplining risky banks, even under full insurance.

This study examines the ways in which two major stakeholders of banks reacted to the risk-taking behavior of banks in Turkey. The results show that both depositors and borrowers reacted significantly and tried to punish risky banks. Moreover, the introduction of complete guarantee was found to significantly strengthen the market reaction in Turkey. Hence, depositors and borrowers showed their reaction either by decreasing their involvement with risky banks or by asking for a higher price on their savings at risk. Nonetheless, bank managers continued to undertake risky behavior, especially in the period with full government guarantee on deposits, implying that generous coverage undermines market confidence. The findings of this paper and the results of the recent massive banking crisis in 2001 suggest that market reaction in Turkey was ineffective to reduce the moral hazard in the banking sector. Our results support the findings of Opiela (2004) that encouraging market monitoring is ineffective in eliminating banks’ risk-taking. Moreover, although the IMF and the World Bank recommend that developing countries adopt explicit deposit insurance (Demirguc-Kunt, Kane & Laeven, 2007), it does not eliminate a banking crisis: even a market reacts to the moral hazard behavior of banks.