Corporate bankruptcies and official bail-outs: A cost–benefit analysis

Abstract

The existence of government guarantees to bail out investors and the use of official support to prevent corporate bankruptcies are commonly viewed to have largely contributed to the financial fragilities of many emerging market economies during the 1990s. This paper attempts to rationalize the existence and the duration of such policies. By using a simple model of the economy, we formalize governments’ decision on how long to provide resources to bridge the gap between the corporate sector's earnings and obligations. By considering both the costs and benefits of bail-outs in an environment where there are unfavorable productivity shocks, we show that the bail-out policy ends sooner; the higher the initial level of foreign borrowing, the lower the productivity, the lower the rate of time preference, and the higher the world interest rate. We also show that given any set of fundamentals, an unfavorable shift in market sentiments may end such policies sooner than otherwise.