Systemic Banking Crises: A New Database
Author: Mr. Luc Laeven and Mr. Fabian Valencia

Contributor Notes

Author’s E-Mail Address: LLaeven@imf.org, Fvalencia@imf.org
Publication Date:
01 Sep 2008
ISBN:
9781451870824
Language:
English
Keywords:
WP; central bank; banking system; subprime mortgage; banking crisis; real GDP
Download PDF (285.9 KB)

This paper presents a new database on the timing of systemic banking crises and policy responses to resolve them. The database covers the universe of systemic banking crises for the period 1970-2007, with detailed data on crisis containment and resolution policies for 42 crisis episodes, and also includes data on the timing of currency crises and sovereign debt crises. The database extends and builds on the Caprio, Klingebiel, Laeven, and Noguera (2005) banking crisis database, and is the most complete and detailed database on banking crises to date.

Abstract

This paper presents a new database on the timing of systemic banking crises and policy responses to resolve them. The database covers the universe of systemic banking crises for the period 1970-2007, with detailed data on crisis containment and resolution policies for 42 crisis episodes, and also includes data on the timing of currency crises and sovereign debt crises. The database extends and builds on the Caprio, Klingebiel, Laeven, and Noguera (2005) banking crisis database, and is the most complete and detailed database on banking crises to date.

I. Introduction

Financial crises can be damaging and contagious, prompting calls for swift policy responses. The financial crises of the past have led affected economies into deep recessions and sharp current account reversals. Some crises turned out to be contagious, rapidly spreading to countries with no apparent vulnerabilities. Among the many causes of financial crises have been a combination of unsustainable macroeconomic policies (including large current account deficits and unsustainable public debt), excessive credit booms, large capital inflows, and balance sheet fragilities, combined with policy paralysis due to a variety of political and economic constraints. In many financial crises currency and maturity mismatches were a salient feature, while in others off-balance sheet operations of the banking sector were prominent.2

Choosing the best way of resolving a financial crisis and accelerating economic recovery is far from unproblematic. There has been little agreement on what constitutes best practice or even good practice. Many approaches have been proposed and tried to resolve systemic crises more efficiently. Part of these differences may arise because objectives of the policy advice have varied. Some have focused on reducing the fiscal costs of financial crises, others on limiting the economic costs in terms of lost output and on accelerating restructuring, whereas again others have focused on achieving long-term, structural reforms. Trade-offs are likely to arise between these objectives.3 Governments may, for example, through certain policies consciously incur large fiscal outlays in resolving a banking crisis, with the objective to accelerate recovery. Or structural reforms may only be politically feasible in the context of a severe crisis with large output losses and high fiscal costs.

This paper introduces and describes a new dataset on banking crises, with detailed information about the type of policy responses employed to resolve crises in different countries. The emphasis is on policy responses to restore the banking system to health. The dataset expands the Caprio, Klingebiel, Laeven, and Noguera (2005) banking crisis database by including recent banking crises, information on currency and debt crises, and information on crisis containment and resolution measures. The database covers all systemically important banking crises for the period 1970 to 2007, and has detailed information on crisis management strategies for 42 systemic banking crises from 37 countries.

Governments have employed a broad range of policies to deal with financial crises. Central to identifying sound policy approaches to financial crises is the recognition that policy responses that reallocate wealth toward banks and debtors and away from taxpayers face a key trade-off. Such reallocations of wealth can help to restart productive investment, but they have large costs. These costs include taxpayers’ wealth that is spent on financial assistance and indirect costs from misallocations of capital and distortions to incentives that may result from encouraging banks and firms to abuse government protections. Those distortions may worsen capital allocation and risk management after the resolution of the crisis.

Institutional weaknesses typically aggravate the crisis and complicate crisis resolution. Bankruptcy and restructuring frameworks are often deficient. Disclosure and accounting rules for financial institutions and corporations may be weak. Equity and creditor rights may be poorly defined or weakly enforced. And the judiciary system is often inefficient.

Many financial crises, especially those in countries with fixed exchange rates, turn out to be twin crises with currency depreciation exacerbating banking sector problems through foreign currency exposures of borrowers or banks themselves. In such cases, another complicating factor is the conflicting objectives of the desire to maintain currency pegs and the need to provide liquidity support to the banking system.

Existing empirical research has shown that providing assistance to banks and their borrowers can be counterproductive, resulting in increased losses to banks, which often abuse forbearance to take unproductive risks at government expense. The typical result of forbearance is a deeper hole in the net worth of banks, crippling tax burdens to finance bank bailouts, and even more severe credit supply contraction and economic decline than would have occurred in the absence of forbearance.4

Cross-country analysis to date also shows that accommodative policy measures (such as substantial liquidity support, explicit government guarantee on financial institutions’ liabilities and forbearance from prudential regulations) tend to be fiscally costly and that these particular policies do not necessarily accelerate the speed of economic recovery.5 Of course, the caveat to these findings is that a counterfactual to the crisis resolution cannot be observed and therefore it is difficult to speculate how a crisis would unfold in absence of such policies. Better institutions are, however, uniformly positively associated with faster recovery.

The remainder of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 presents new data on the timing of banking crises, currency crises, and sovereign debt crises. Section 3 presents variable definitions of the data collected on crisis management techniques for a subset of systemic banking crises. Section 4 presents descriptive statistics of data on containment and resolution policies, fiscal costs, and output losses. Section 5 discusses the ongoing global liquidity crisis originated with the U.S. subprime crisis. Section 6 concludes.

II. Crisis Dates

A. Banking Crises

We start with a definition of a systemic banking crisis. Under our definition, in a systemic banking crisis, a country’s corporate and financial sectors experience a large number of defaults and financial institutions and corporations face great difficulties repaying contracts on time. As a result, non-performing loans increase sharply and all or most of the aggregate banking system capital is exhausted. This situation may be accompanied by depressed asset prices (such as equity and real estate prices) on the heels of run-ups before the crisis, sharp increases in real interest rates, and a slowdown or reversal in capital flows. In some cases, the crisis is triggered by depositor runs on banks, though in most cases it is a general realization that systemically important financial institutions are in distress.

Using this broad definition of a systemic banking crisis that combines quantitative data with some subjective assessment of the situation, we identify the starting year of systemic banking crises around the world since the year 1970. Unlike prior work (Caprio and Klingebiel, 1996, and Caprio, Klingebiel, Laeven, and Noguera, 2005), we exclude banking system distress events that affected isolated banks but were not systemic in nature. As a cross-check on the timing of each crisis, we examine whether the crisis year coincides with deposit runs, the introduction of a deposit freeze or blanket guarantee, or extensive liquidity support or bank interventions.6 This way we are able to confirm about two-thirds of the crisis dates. Alternatively, we require that it becomes apparent that the banking system has a large proportion of nonperforming loans and that most of its capital has been exhausted.7 This additional requirement applies to the remainder of crisis dates.

In sum, we identify 124 systemic banking crises over the period 1970 to 2007. This list is an updated, corrected, and expanded version of the Caprio and Klingebiel (1996) and Caprio, Klingebiel, Laeven, and Noguera (2005) banking crisis databases. Table 1 lists the starting year of each banking crisis, as well as some background information on each crisis, including peak nonperforming loans (percent of total loans), gross fiscal costs (percent of GDP), output loss (percent of GDP), and minimum real GDP growth rate (in percent). Peak nonperforming loans is the highest level of nonperforming loans as percentage of total loans during the first five years of the crisis. Gross fiscal costs are computed over the first five years following the start of the crisis using data from Hoelscher and Quintyn (2003), Honohan and Laeven (2003), IMF Staff reports, and publications from national authorities and institutions. Output losses are computed by extrapolating trend real GDP, based on the trend in real GDP growth up to the year preceding the crisis, and taking the sum of the differences between actual real GDP and trend real GDP expressed as a percentage of trend real GDP for the first four years of the crisis (including the crisis year).8 Minimum real GDP growth rate is the lowest real GDP growth rate during the first three years of the crisis.

Table 1.

Timing of Systemic Banking Crises

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B. Currency Crises

Building on the approach in Frankel and Rose (1996), we define a “currency crisis” as a nominal depreciation of the currency of at least 30 percent that is also at least a 10 percent increase in the rate of depreciation compared to the year before. In terms of measurement of the exchange rate depreciation, we use the percent change of the end-of-period official nominal bilateral dollar exchange rate from the World Economic Outlook (WEO) database of the IMF. For countries that meet the criteria for several continuous years, we use the first year of each 5-year window to identify the crisis. This definition yields 208 currency crises during the period 1970-2007. It should be noted that this list also includes large devaluations by countries that adopt fixed exchange rate regimes.

C. Sovereign Debt Crises

We identify and date episodes of sovereign debt default and restructuring by relying on information from Beim and Calomiris (2001), World Bank (2002), Sturzenegger and Zettelmeyer (2006), and IMF Staff reports. The information compiled include year of sovereign defaults to private lending and year of debt rescheduling.Using this approach, we identify 63 episodes of sovereign debt defaults and restructurings since 1970.

Table 2 list the complete list of starting years of systemic banking crises, currency crises, and sovereign debt crises.

Table 2.

Timing of Financial Crises

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D. Frequency of Crises and Occurrence of Twin Crises

Table 3 reports the frequency of different types of crises (banking, currency, and sovereign debt), as well as the occurrence of twin (banking and currency) crises or triple (banking, currency, and debt) crises. We define a twin crisis in year t as a banking crisis in year t, combined with a currency crisis during the period [t-1, t+1]), and we define a triple crisis in year t as a banking crisis in year t, combined with a currency crisis during the period [t-1, t+1]) and a sovereign debt crisis during the period [t-1, t+1].

Table 3.

Frequency of Financial Crises 1/

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Twin crisis indicates banking crisis in year t and currency crisis during [t-1, t+1]. Triple crisis indicates banking crisis in year t and currency crisis during [t-1, t+1] and debt crisis during [t-1, t+1]).

We find that banking crises were most frequent during the early 1990’s, with a maximum of 13 systemic banking crises starting in the year 1995. Currency crises were also common during the first-half of the 1990’s but the early 1980’s also represented a high mark for currency crises, with a peak in 1981 of 45 episodes. Sovereign debt crises were also relatively common during the early 1980’s, with a peak of 10 debt crises in 1983. In total, we count 124 banking crises, 208 currency crises, and 63 sovereign debt crises over the period 1970 to 2007. Note that several countries experienced multiple crises. Of these 124 banking crises, 42 are considered twin crises and 10 can be classified as triple crises, using our definition.

III. Crisis Containment and Resolution

In reviewing crisis policy responses it is useful to differentiate between the containment and resolution phases of systemic restructuring (see Honohan and Laeven, 2003; and Hoelscher and Quintyn, 2003, for further details). During the containment phase, the financial crisis is still unfolding. During this phase, governments tend to implement policies aimed at restoring public confidence to minimize the repercussions on the real sector of the loss of confidence by depositors and other investors in the financial system. The resolution phase involves the actual financial, and to a lesser extent operational, restructuring of financial institutions and corporations. While policy responses to crises naturally divide into immediate reactions during the containment phase of the crisis, and long-term responses towards resolution of the crisis, immediate responses often remain part of the long-run policy response. Poorly chosen containment policies undermine the potential for successful long-term resolution. It is thus useful to recognize the context in which policy responses to financial crises occur.

For a subset of 42 systemic banking crises episodes (in 37 countries) that are well documented, we have collected detailed data on crisis containment and resolution policies using a variety of sources, including IMF Staff reports, World Bank documents, and working papers from central bank staff and academics. This section explains in detail the type of data collected, and defines variables in the process, organized by the following categories: initial conditions, containment policies, resolution policies, macroeconomic policies, and outcome variables.

A. Overview and Initial Conditions

We start with information on initial conditions of the crisis, including whether or not banking distress coincided with exchange rate pressures and sovereign debt repayment problems, initial macroeconomic conditions, the state of the banking system, and institutional development of the country.

  • CRISIS DATE is the starting date of the banking crisis, including year and month, when available. The timing of the banking crisis follows the approach described in section II.

  • CURRENCY CRISIS indicates whether or not a currency crisis occurred during the period [t-1, t+1], where t denotes the starting year of the banking crisis. The timing of a currency crisis follows the approach described in section II, except that we do not impose the restriction that we only keep the first year of each 5-year window for observations that meet the criteria for several continuous years. For example, if the currency experiences a nominal depreciation of at least 30 percent that is also at least a 10 percent increase in the rate of depreciation in both years t-2 and t-1, with t the starting year of the banking crisis, we treat year t-1 as the year of the currency crisis for the purposes of creating this variable. We also list the year of the currency crisis, denoted as YEAR OF CURRENCY CRISIS.

  • SOVEREIGN DEBT CRISIS indicates whether or not a sovereign debt crisis occurred during the period [t-1, t+1], where t denotes the starting year of the banking crisis. The timing of a sovereign debt crisis follows the approach described in section II. We also list the year of the sovereign debt crisis, denoted as YEAR OF SOVEREIGN DEBT CRISIS.

  • This is followed by a brief description of the crisis, denoted as BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF CRISIS.

In terms of initial macroeconomic conditions, we have collected information on the following variables. Each of these variables are computed at time t-1, where t denotes the starting year of the banking crisis, using data from the IMF’s IFS and World Economic Outlook (WEO).

  • FISCAL BALANCE/GDP is the ratio of the General Government balance to GDP for the pre-crisis year t-1, where t denotes the starting year of the banking crisis.9

  • PUBLIC DEBT/GDP is the ratio of the General Government gross debt to GDP for the pre-crisis year t-1, where t denotes the starting year of the banking crisis.

  • INFLATION is the percentage increase in the CPI index during the pre-crisis year t-1, where t denotes the starting year of the banking crisis.

  • NET FOREIGN ASSETS (CENTRAL BANK) is the net foreign assets of the Central Bank in millions of US dollars for the pre-crisis year t-1, where t denotes the starting year of the banking crisis.

  • NET FOREIGN ASSETS/M2 is the ratio of net foreign assets (Central Bank) to M2 for the pre-crisis year t-1, where t denotes the starting year of the banking crisis.

  • DEPOSITS/GDP is the ratio of total deposits at deposit taking institutions to GDP for the pre-crisis year t-1, where t denotes the starting year of the banking crisis.

  • GDP GROWTH is real growth in GDP during the pre-crisis year t-1, where t denotes the starting year of the banking crisis.

  • CURRENT ACCOUNT/GDP is the ratio of current account to GDP for the pre-crisis year t-1, where t denotes the starting year of the banking crisis.

We have collected the following information on the state of the banking system.

  • PEAK NPL is the peak ratio of nonperforming loans to total loans (in percent) during the years [t, t+5], where t is the starting year of the crisis. This is an estimate using data from Honohan and Laeven (2003) and IMF staff reports. In all cases, we use the country’s definition of nonperforming loans.

  • GOVERNMENT OWNED is the share of banking system assets that is government-owned (in percent) in year t-1, where t denoted the starting year of the banking crisis. Data are from La Porta et al. (2002) and refer to the year 1980 or 1995, whichever is closer to the starting date of the crisis, t. When more recent data is available from IMF staff reports, such data is used instead.

  • SIGNIFICANT BANK RUNS indicates whether or not the country’s banking system experiences a depositors’ run, defined as a one-month percentage drop in total outstanding deposits in excess of 5 percent during the period [t, t+1], where t denotes the starting year of the banking crisis. This variable is constructed using data from IFS.

  • CREDIT BOOM indicates whether or not the country has experienced a credit boom leading up to the crisis, defined as three-year pre-crisis average growth in private credit to GDP in excess of 10 percent per annum, computed over the period (t-4, t-1], where t denotes the starting year of the banking crisis. This variable is constructed using data from IFS.

As proxy for institutional development, we collect data on the degree of protection of credit rights in the country.

  • CREDITOR RIGHTS is an index of protection of creditors’ rights from Djankov et al. (2007). The index ranges from 0 to 4 and higher scores denotes better protection of creditor rights. We use the score in the year t, where t denotes the starting year of the banking crisis.

B. Crisis Containment Policies

Initially, the government’s policy options are limited to those policies that do not rely on the formation of new institutions or complex new mechanisms. Immediate policy responses include (a) suspension of convertibility of deposits, which prevents bank depositors from seeking repayment from banks, (b) regulatory capital forbearance10, which allows banks to avoid the cost of regulatory compliance (for example by allowing banks to overstate their equity capital in order to avoid the costs of contractions in loan supply), (c) emergency liquidity support to banks, or (d) a government guarantee of depositors. Each of these immediate policy actions are motivated by adverse changes in the condition of banks.

Banks suffering severe losses tend not only to see rising costs but also to experience liability rationing, either because they must contract deposits to satisfy their regulatory equity capital requirement, or because depositors at risk of loss prefer to place funds in more stable intermediaries. Banks, in turn, will transmit those difficulties to their borrowers in the form of a contraction of credit supply (Valencia 2008). Credit will become more costly and financial distress of borrowers and banks more likely.

The appropriate policy response will depend on whether the trigger for the crisis is a loss of depositor confidence (triggering a deposit run), regulatory recognition of bank insolvency, or the knock-on effects of financial asset market disturbances outside the banking system, including exchange rate and wider macroeconomic pressures.

Deposit withdrawals can be addressed by emergency liquidity loans, usually from the central bank when market sources are insufficient, by an extension of government guarantees of depositors and other bank creditors, or by a temporary suspension of depositor rights in what is often called a “bank holiday”. Each of these techniques is designed to buy time, and in the case of the first two, that depositor confidence can soon be restored. The success of each technique will crucially depend on the credibility and creditworthiness of the government.

Preventing looting of an insolvent or near insolvent bank requires a different set of containment tools, which may include administrative intervention including the temporary assumption of management powers by a regulatory official, or closure, which may for example include the subsidized compulsory sale of a bank’s good assets to a sound bank, together with the assumption by that bank of all or most of the failed entity’s banking liabilities; or more simply an assisted merger. Here the prior availability of the necessary legal powers is critical, given the incentive for bank insiders to hang on, as well as the customary cognitive gaps causing insiders to deny the failure of their bank.

Most complex of all are the cases where disruption of banking is part of a wider financial and macroeconomic turbulence. In this case, the bankers may be innocent victims of external circumstances, and it is now that special care is needed to ensure that regulations do not become part of the problem. Regulatory forbearance on capital and liquid reserve requirements may prove to be appropriate in these conditions. Regulatory capital forbearance allows banks to avoid the cost of regulatory compliance, for example, by allowing banks to overstate their equity capital in order to avoid the costs of contractions in loan supply.

Adopting the correct approach to an emerging financial crisis calls for a clear understanding of what the underlying cause of the crisis is, as well as a quick judgment as to the likely effectiveness of the alternative tools that are available. The actions taken at this time will have a possibly irreversible impact on the ultimate allocation of losses in the system. In addition, the longer term implications in the form of moral hazard for the future also need to be taken into account.

All too often, central banks privilege stability over cost in the heat of the containment phase: if so, they may too liberally extend loans to an illiquid bank which is almost certain to prove insolvent anyway. Also, closure of a nonviable bank is often delayed for too long, even when there are clear signs of insolvency (Lindgren, 2003). Since bank closures face many obstacles, there is a tendency to rely instead on blanket government guarantees which, if the government’s fiscal and political position makes them credible, can work albeit at the cost of placing the burden on the budget, typically squeezing future provision of needed public services.

We collect information on the following crisis containment policies.

First, we collect information on whether the authorities impose deposit freezes, bank holidays, or blanket guarantee to stop or prevent bank runs.

  • DEPOSIT FREEZE indicates whether or not the authorities imposed a freeze on deposits. If a freeze on deposits is implemented, we collect information on the duration of the deposit freeze (in months), and the type of deposits affected.

  • BANK HOLIDAY indicates whether or not the authorities installed a bank holiday. In case a bank holiday is introduced, we collect information on the duration of bank holiday (in days).

  • BLANKET GUARANTEE indicates whether or not the authorities introduced a blanket guarantee on deposits (and possibly other liabilities). In case a blanket guarantee is introduced, we collect information on the date of introduction and the date of removal of the blanket guarantee and compute the duration that the guarantee is in place (in months). We also collect information on whether or not a previous explicit deposit insurance arrangement was in place at the time of the introduction of the blanket guarantee, the name of the administering agency of the blanket guarantee, and the coverage of the guarantee (deposits or also other liabilities).

  • TIMING OF FIRST BANK INTERVENTION indicates the date (month and year) that the authorities intervened for the first time in a bank.

  • TIMING OF FIRST LIQUIDITY ASSISTANCE indicates the date (month and year) that the first loan under liquidity assistance was granted to a financial institution.

Next, we collect information on the timing and scope of emergency liquidity support to financial institutions.

  • LIQUIDITY SUPPORT indicates whether or not emergency liquidity support, measured as claims from monetary authorities on deposit money banks (IFS line 12E) to total deposits, is at least 5 percent and at least doubled with respect to the previous year during the period [t, t+3], where t is the starting year of the banking crisis.

    In terms of liquidity support, we also collect information on whether or not liquidity support was different across banks, or whether or not emergency lending was remunerated. If liquidity support was remunerated, we collect information on whether or not interest was at market rates.

    We also collect information on the peak of liquidity support (in percent of deposits), computed as the maximum value (in percent) of the ratio of claims from monetary authorities on deposit money banks (IFS line 12E) to total deposits during the period [t, t+3], where t is the starting year of the banking crisis.

  • LOWERING OF RESERVE REQUIREMENTS denotes whether or not authorities lowered reserve requirements in response to the crisis.

C. Crisis Resolution Policies

Once emergency measures have been put in place to contain the crisis, the government faces the long-run challenge of crisis resolution, which entails the resumption of a normally functioning credit system and legal system, and the rebuilding of banks’ and borrowers’ balance sheets.

At this point, the crisis has left banks and nonfinancial firms insolvent and many are in government ownership or under court or regulatory administration. Economic growth is unlikely to resume on a secure basis until productive assets and banking franchises are back in the hands of solvent private entities.

The financial and organizational restructuring of financial and non-financial firms during the crisis resolution phase is thus a large task, typically entailing much detailed implementation work in the bankruptcy courts, as well as the use of informal or ad hoc work-out procedures. There are also important trade-offs such as that between speed and durability of the subsequent economic recovery on the one hand, and the fiscal costs on the other.

Crisis resolution involves inherently complicated coordination problems between debtors and creditors. The fate of an individual corporation or financial institution and the best course of action for its owners and managers will depend on the actions of many others and the general economic outlook. Because of these coordination problems, as well as a lack of capital and the importance of the financial system to economic growth, governments often take the lead in systemic restructuring, especially of the banking system. In the process, governments often incur large fiscal costs, presumably with the objective to accelerate the recovery from the crisis.

The most recurrent question arising at this time is: should an overindebted corporate entity be somehow subsidized or forgiven some of its debt, or should its assets be transferred to a new corporate structure and new management? This question applies to undercapitalized banks and to overindebted nonbank corporations alike. The feasibility of making such decisions on a case-by-case basis becomes problematic during a systemic crisis resulting in thousands of insolvencies and it becomes necessary to establish a systematic approach. General principles have proved elusive and, as well as depending on the scale of the crisis and the quality of existing legal and other governance institutions, to an extent the best answer is likely to depend on the source of the crisis.

Where the problem results from an economy-wide crash, the best prospect for future performance of banks and their borrowing customers may be with their existing owners and managers, given the information and other intangible forms of firm or relationship-specific capital they possess. On the other hand, where bank insolvency has been the result of incompetent, reckless or corrupt banking, or the use of government-controlled banks as quasi-fiscal vehicles or for political purposes, the relevant stock of information and relationship capital is unlikely to be of much social value. Therefore, separating the good assets from their current managers and owners offers better prospects in such circumstances as well as establishing a better precedent for avoiding moral hazard. Information capital is also likely to be relatively unimportant for real estate ventures, which have been central to many recent banking crises.

The main policy approaches employed in the resolution phase of recent crises include: (a) conditional government-subsidized, but decentralized, workouts of distressed loans; (b) debt forgiveness; (c) the establishment of a government-owned asset management company to buy and resolve distressed loans; (d) government-assisted sales of financial institutions to new owners, typically foreign; and (e) government-assisted recapitalization of financial institutions through injection of funds. We focus on the latter three that deal with bank insolvency.

In an attempt to let the market determine which firms are capable of surviving given some modest assistance, some official schemes have offered loan subsidies to distressed borrowers conditional on the borrower’s shareholders injecting some new capital. Likewise there have been schemes offering injection of government capital funds for insolvent banks whose shareholders were willing to provide matching funds.

To the extent that they are discretionary, schemes of debt relief for bank borrowers carry the risk of moral hazard as debtors stop trying to repay in the hope of being added to the list of scheme beneficiaries.

Generalized forms of debt relief, such as is effectively provided by inflation and currency depreciation, can be regarded as relationship-friendly in the sense introduced above. Inflation is also a solution that reduces the budgetary burden. After all, if the crisis is big enough, the government’s choices may be limited by what it can afford. Its capacity to subsidize borrowers or inject capital into banks are constrained by its ability over time to raise taxes or cut expenditure. It is for these reasons that inflationary solutions or currency devaluation have been a feature of the resolution of many crises in the past. This amounts to generalized debt relief and a transfer of the costs of the crisis to money holders and other nominal creditors. In this case the banks as well as the nonbank debtors receive relief, without a climate of debtor delinquency being created. Of course these are questions of monetary and macroeconomic policy as much as banking policy and need to be considered in the light of the need to preserve an environment of macroeconomic stability into the future.

In contrast, the carving-out of an insolvent bank’s bad loan portfolio, and its organizational restructuring under new management and ownership, represents the alternative pole, appropriate where large parts of the bank’s information capital was dysfunctional. The bad loan portfolio may be sold back into the market, or disposed of by a government-owned asset management company. The effectiveness of government-run AMCs has been quite mixed: better where the assets to be disposed have been primarily real estate, less good where loans to large politically-connected firms dominated (Klingebiel, 2000).

Government itself often retains control and ownership of troubled banks for much of the duration of the resolution phase. Whether or not control of the bank passes into public hands, it should eventually emerge, and at this point it must be adequately capitalized. Depending on how earlier loss allocation decisions have been taken, the sums of money that are involved in the recapitalization of the bank so that it can safely be sold into private hands may be huge. Many governments have felt constrained by fiscal and monetary policy considerations from doing the financial restructuring properly. Putting the bank on a sound financial footing should be the priority. Without this, banks will be undercapitalized, whatever the accounts state, and will have an incentive to resume reckless behavior.

Countries typically apply a combination of resolution strategies, including both government-managed programs and market-based mechanisms (Calomiris, Klingebiel and Laeven, 2003). Both prove to depend for their success on efficient and effective legal, regulatory, supervisory, and political institutions. Further, a lack of attention to incentive problems when designing specific rules governing financial assistance can aggravate moral hazard problems, especially in environments where these institutions are weak, unnecessarily raising the costs of resolution. Policymakers in economies with weak institutions should, accordingly, not expect to achieve the same level of success in financial restructuring as in more developed countries, and they should design resolution mechanisms accordingly.

We collect information on the following crisis resolution policies.

  • FORBEARANCE indicates whether or not there is regulatory forbearance during the years [t, t+3], where t denotes the starting year of the crisis. This variable is based on a qualitative assessment of information contained in IMF Staff reports. As part of this assessment, we also collect information on whether or not banks were permitted to continue functioning despite being technically insolvent, and whether or not prudential regulations (such as for loan classification and loan loss provisioning) were suspended or not fully applied during the first three years of the crisis.

In terms of actual bank restructuring, we collect information on nationalizations, closures, mergers, sales, and recapitalizations.

  • LARGE-SCALE GOVERNMENT INTERVENTION indicates whether or not there was large-scale government intervention in banks, such as nationalizations, closures, mergers, sales, and recapitalizations of large banks, during the years [t, t+3], where t denotes the starting year of the crisis.

  • INSTITUTIONS CLOSED indicates the share of bank assets (in percent) liquidated or closed during the years [t, t+3], where t is starting year of crisis. We also collect information on the number of banks in year t and the number of banks in t+3, where t is the starting year of the crisis.

  • BANK CLOSURES indicates whether or not banks were closed during the period t to t+3, where t is the starting year of the crisis. We also collect information on the number of banks closed or liquidated during the period t to t+3, where t is starting year of crisis.

    We separately collect information on whether or not financial institutions other than banks were closed (OTHER FI CLOSURES), and on whether or not shareholders of closed institutions were made whole (SHAREHOLDER PROTECTION).

    We also collect information on whether or not banks were nationalized (NATIONALIZATIONS), merged (MERGERS), or sold to foreigners (SALES TO FOREIGNERS) during the period t to t+5, where t is starting year of crisis. For mergers, we also collect information on whether or not private shareholders/owners of banks injected, and for sales to foreigners we collect information on the number of banks sold to foreigners during period t to t+5, where t is the starting year of crisis.

    Next, we collect information on whether or not a bank restructuring agency (BANK RESTRUCTURING AGENCY) was set up to deal with bank restructuring, and whether or not an asset management company (ASSET MANAGEMENT COMPANY) was set up to take over and manage distressed assets. In case an asset management company was set up, we collect information on whether it was centralized or decentralized, the entity in charge, its funding, and the type of assets transferred.

As part of crisis resolution, systemically important (or government-owned) banks are often recapitalized by the government.

  • RECAPITALIZATION denotes whether or not banks were recapitalized by the government during the period t to t+3, where t is the starting year of the crisis.

    Banks can be recapitalized using a variety of measures. In terms of recapitalization methods, we collect information on whether or not recapitalization occurred in the form of (1) cash, (2) government bonds, (3) subordinated debt, (4) preferred shares, (5) purchase of bad loans, (6) credit lines, (7) assumption of bank liabilities, (8) ordinary shares, or (9) other means.

We also collect information, when available, on the targeted recapitalization level of banks (expressed as a percentage of assets) and an estimate of the gross recapitalization cost (as a percent of GDP) to the government during the period t to t+5, where t is the starting year of the crisis. The latter variable is denoted as RECAP COST (GROSS).

Next, we collect information on the recovery of recapitalization costs.

  • RECOVERY denotes whether or not the government was able to recover part of the recapitalization cost.

  • RECOVERY PROCEEDS denotes the recovery proceeds (as percent of GDP) during the period t to t+5, where t is the starting year of the crisis.

  • RECAP COST (NET) denotes the net recapitalization cost to the government, expressed as a percentage of GDP, computed as the difference between the gross recapitalization cost and recovery proceeds.

On deposit insurance and depositor compensation, we collect the following information from Demirguc-Kunt, Kane, and Laeven (2008) and IMF Staff reports.

  • DEPOSIT INSURANCE indicates whether or not an explicit deposit insurance scheme is in place at the start of the banking crisis. Note that we ignore deposit insurance arrangements put in place after the first year of the crisis.

  • FORMATION reports the year that the deposit insurance scheme was introduced.

  • COVERAGE LIMIT denotes the coverage limit (in local currency) of insured deposits at the start of the banking crisis. This variable is set to zero if there is no explicit deposit insurance.

  • COVERAGE RATIO is the ratio of the coverage limit to per capita GDP at the start of the banking crisis. This variable is set to zero if there is no explicit deposit insurance.

  • WERE LOSSES IMPOSED ON DEPOSITORS? denotes whether or not losses were imposed on depositors of failed banks, and if so, we report whether these losses were severe (implying large discounts and a substantial number of people affected) or not.

D. Macroeconomic Policies

Governments also tend to change macroeconomic policy to manage banking crises and reduce its negative impact on the real sector. In addition to crisis containment and resolution policies, we therefore also collect information on monetary policy and fiscal stance during the first three years of the crisis. While these measures are somewhat crude, they serve the purpose of providing some sense about the policy stance.

  • MONETARY POLICY INDEX is an index of monetary policy stance during the years [t, t+3], where t denotes the starting year of the crisis. The index indicates whether monetary policy is (a) expansive (+1), if the average percentage change in reserve money during the years [t, t+3] is between 1 to 5 percent higher than during the years [t-4, t-1]; (b) contractive (-1), if the average percentage change in reserve money during the years [t, t+3] is between 1 to 5 percent lower than during the years [t-4, t-1]; or neither (0).

    We also report the average change in reserve money (in percent) during the years [t, t+3], where t denotes the starting year of the banking crisis.

  • FISCAL POLICY INDEX is an index of fiscal policy stance during the years [t, t+3], where t denotes the starting year of the crisis. The index indicates whether fiscal policy is (a) expansive (+1), if the average fiscal balance during the years [t, t+3] is less than -1.5 percent of GDP; (b) contractive (-1), if the average fiscal balance during the years [t, t+3] is greater than 1.5 percent of GDP; or neither (0).

    We also report the average fiscal balance (in percent of GDP) during the years [t, t+3], where t denotes the starting year of the banking crisis.

Finally, we report whether or not an IMF program was put in place around the time of the banking crisis (IMF PROGRAM), including the year the program was put in place.

E. Outcome Variables

In terms of outcome variables, we collect information on fiscal costs and output losses.

  • FISCAL COST (NET) denotes the net fiscal cost, expressed as a percentage of GDP, over the period [t, t+5], where t denotes the starting year of the crisis. We also report the gross fiscal costs, and the recovery proceeds over the period [t, t+5], which is the difference between the two. Fiscal cost estimates are from Hoelscher and Quintyn (2003), Honohan and Laeven (2003), IMF Staff reports, and publications from national authorities and institutions.

  • OUTPUT LOSS is computed by extrapolating trend real GDP, based on the trend in real GDP growth up to the year preceding the crisis, and taking the sum of the differences between actual real GDP and trend real GDP expressed as a percentage of trend real GDP for the period [t, t+3], where t is the starting year of the crisis. We require a minimum of three pre-crisis real GDP growth observations to compute the trend real GDP numbers.11

IV. Descriptive Statistics

Table 4 summarizes the data collected on crisis containment and resolution policies for a subset of 42 systemic banking crises. The list of crisis countries consists of: Argentina (four times), Bolivia, Brazil (two times), Bulgaria, Chile, Colombia (two times), Cote d’Ivoire, Croatia, Czech Republic, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Estonia, Finland, Ghana, Indonesia, Jamaica, Japan, Korea, Latvia, Lithuania, Malaysia, Mexico, Nicaragua, Norway, Paraguay, Philippines, Russia, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay, Venezuela, and Vietnam. Note that the financial crisis in the United Kingdom and United States is still ongoing at the time of writing of this paper, so the analysis of crisis containment and resolution policies for these two countries is preliminary and incomplete.

Table 4.

Crisis Containment and Resolution Policies for Selected Banking Crises

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