Liquidity Shortages And Monetary Policy

The paper models the interaction between risk taking in the financial sector and central bank policy for the case of pure illiquidity risk. It is shown that, when bad states are highly unlikely, public provision of liquidity may improve the allocation, even though it encourages more risk taking (less liquid investment) by private banks. In general, however, there is an incentive of financial intermediaries to free ride on liquidity in good states, resulting in excessively low liquidity in bad states. In the prevailing mixed-strategy equilibrium, depositors are worse off than if banks would coordinate on more liquid investment. In that case, liquidity injection could make the free riding problem even worse.