Risiken bei systemrelevanten Institutionen: wirtschaftspolitische Analyse am Beispiel der Schweiz
The financial crisis has demonstrated the enormous economic costs of the failure of systemically relevant financial institutions. The size and interconnectedness of such institutions creates external effects and the fact that governments are de facto forced to prevent their bankruptcy creates moral hazard. In both cases economic theory clearly suggest that the regulatory framework should aim at reducing or eliminating these maket failures. This article explains, how to identify systemically relevant institutions, shows how Switzerland addressed this problem and concludes with a cost-benefit evaluation of such too big to fail (TBTF) policies. The development of the Swiss TBTF regime shows that provisions have to be made for the going concern as well as for the gone concern. Going concern measures aim at reducing the probability that a big financial institution fails. They are important but they have to be amended by gone concern provisions that – in case of a failure – enable the…
