Do deposit insurance programs contribute to financial developmen? Yes, but only if the regulatory environment is sound.

This paper provides empirical evidence on the impact of deposit insurance on financial development and stability, broadly defined to include the level of banking activity and the stability of the banking sector. We use a unique dataset capturing a variety of deposit insurance features across countries, such as coverage, premium structure, etc. and synthesize available information by means of principal component indices. This paper is the first in this field of the literature to specifically address sample selection concerns by estimating a generalized Tobit model both via maximum likelihood and the Heckman 2-step method. The empirical construct is guided by recent theories of banking regulation that employ an agency framework. The basic moral hazard problem is the incentive for depository institutions to engage in excessively high-risk activities, relative to socially optimal outcomes, in order to increase the option value of their deposit insurance guarantee. The overall empirical evidence is consistent with the likelihood that generous government-funded deposit insurance might have a negative impact on financial development and growth in the long run, except in countries where the rule of law is well established and bank supervisors are granted sufficient discretion and independence from legal reprisals. Insurance premium requirements on member banks, even when risk-adjusted, are instead found to have little effect in restraining banks' risk-taking behavior.

January 1998 Whether the adoption of explicit deposit insurance strengthens financial markets or weakens them depends on the circumstances in which it is adopted. Adopting it to counteract instability appears to have little (or negative) effect. Adopting it when government credibility and institutional development are high appears to have a positive effect on financial depth. Should we expect deposit insurance to have a positive effect on development of the financial sector? All insurance pools individual risks: premiums are paid into a fund from which losses are met. In most circumstances, a residual claimant to the fund (typically a private insurance company) loses money when losses exceed premiums. Claimants that underprice risk tend to go bankrupt. With most deposit insurance, however, the residual claimant is a government agency with very different incentives. If the premiums paid by member banks cannot cover current fund expenditures, the taxpayer makes up the shortfall. Facing little threat of insolvency, there is less incentive for administrative agencies to price risk accurately. In the United States, researchers have found that the combination of increasing competition in banking services and underpriced deposit insurance led to riskier banking portfolios without commensurate increases in bank capital. Deposit insurance may facilitate risk-taking, with negative consequences for the health of the financial system. On the positive side, insurance may give depositors increased confidence in the formal financial sector-which may decrease the likelihood of bank runs and increase financial depth. Indeed, simple bivariate correlations between explicit insurance and financial depth are positive. But when one also controls for income and inflation, that relationship disappears-in fact, the partial correlation between changes in subsequent financial depth and the adoption of explicit insurance is negative (and quite pronounced). Counterintuitive though it may be, that stylized fact may be partially explained by the political and economic factors that motivated the decision to establish an explicit scheme. The circumstances surrounding decisions about deposit insurance are associated with different movements in subsequent financial depth. Adopting explicit deposit insurance to counteract instability in the financial sector does not appear to solve the problem. The typical reaction to that type of decision has been negative, at least with regard to financial depth in the three years after the program's inception. Adopting explicit deposit insurance when government credibility and institutional development were high appears to have had a positive effect on financial depth. This paper-a product of the Development Research Group- part of a larger effort in the group to study the design, implementation, and effects of deposit insurance programs.

Explicit deposit insurance has been spreading rapidly in recent years, even to countries with low levels of financial and institutional development. Economic theory indicates that deposit-insurance design features interact--for good or ill--with country-specific elements of the financial and governmental contracting environment. This paper documents the extent of cross-country differences in deposit-insurance design and reviews empirical evidence on how particular design features affect private market discipline, banking stability, financial development, and the effectiveness of crisis resolution. This evidence challenges the wisdom of encouraging countries to adopt explicit deposit insurance without first stopping to assess and remedy weaknesses in their informational and supervisory environments.

Explicit deposit insurance (DI) is widely held to be a crucial element of modern financial safety nets. This book draws on an original cross-country dataset on DI systems and design features to examine the impact of DI on banking behavior and assess the policy complications that emerge in developing countries.

"Explicit deposit insurance tends to be detrimental to bank stability-- the more so where bank interest rates are deregulated and the institutional environment is weak"--Cover.