Persuading Multiple Audiences: An Information Design Approach to Banking Regulation

Abstract

A policy-maker concerned with the potential default of a bank conducts an asset quality review and a liquidity stress test under the scrutiny of multiple types of market participants (audiences). Surprisingly, the optimal comprehensive assessment is opaque when the bank has high-quality assets, and transparent when the bank has poor-quality assets. Additionally, the policy-maker imposes debt buybacks and contingent recapitalizations. I find that without the latter, disclosure of information about the bank's fundamentals may backfire. When the policy-maker lacks the technology to test the bank's private information, she designs a liquidity-provision program whereby the government offers to buy assets from the bank in exchange for cash and a public disclosure of the bank's liquidity position. Interventions display a non-monotone pecking order: the private sector funds banks with either high or poor-quality assets, while institutions with assets of intermediate quality participate in the government's liquidity program. My results shed light on the optimal way to disclose information in environments with multiple audiences and multi-dimensional fundamentals.