The impact of explicit deposit insurance on market discipline

This paper examines the interaction between market discipline and explicit or implicit deposit insurance using the experiences of Bolivia during the period 1998:1 to 2003:12. The country-specific circumstances during this period allow us to investigate the effect of explicit deposit insurance on market discipline in a setup that resembles a controlled experiment. Contrary to other studies on developing countries, we find a strong link between bank fundamentals and the supply of deposits, which is consistent with the hypothesis that market discipline is at work. The results also suggest that most of the market discipline comes from large depositors. More importantly, we find that the introduction of an explicit deposit insurance system (as opposed to implicit guarantees) caused a significant reduction in market discipline, especially from large depositors. These findings are in line with the characteristics of the deposit insurance system and with the bailout practices of the Bolivian Central Bank before the introduction of deposit insurance. Finally, the results also suggest that foreign banks are subject to less market discipline than domestic banks and that depositors “run” more from domestic banks than from foreign banks during episodes of political instability.