Bank failures are generally liquidity as well as solvency events. Whether it is households running on banks or banks running on banks, defunding episodes are full of drama. This theater has, arguably, lured economists into placing liquidity at the epicenter of financial collapse and liquidity provision as opposed to improved intermediation as the rationale for banks. But loss of liquidity describes how banks fail . Bad news about banks explains why they fail. This paper models banks as arising from asymmetric information. Banks have superior knowledge of investment opportunities. But bankers, or at least a subset, also know how to steal. Hence, we model banking crises as triggered by news that the degree (share) of banking malfeasance is likely to be particularly high. The malfeasance share follows a Markov process. When this period's share is high, agents rationally raise their probability that next period's share will be high as well. Whether or not this proves true, agents invest less in banks, reducing intermediation and output. Worse, bad bankers can infect good bankers. When bad bankers are thought to abound, good bankers have less incentive to secure a high return on their investment. Deposit insurance prevents defunding runs and stabilizes the economy. But it sustains bad banking, lowering welfare. Private monitoring helps, but is no panacea. It partially limits banking malfeasance. But it does so inefficiently as households needlessly replicate each other's costly information acquisition. Moreover, if private audits become public, private monitoring breaks down due to free-riding. Redistribution between generations that do and do not confront the highest share of banking malfeasance does not relieve the problem. What does improve matters is government real-time disclosure of banking malfeasance. This mitigates, if not eliminates, the asymmetric information problem leading to potentially large gains in both nonstolen output and welfare.

中文翻译：

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银行可能是狡猾的秘密守卫者

银行倒闭通常是流动性和偿付能力事件。无论是家庭靠银行，还是银行靠银行，脱金情节都充满戏剧性。可以说，这个戏剧已经诱使经济学家将流动性置于金融崩溃和流动性提供的中心，而不是将改进的中介作为银行的基本原理。但是流动性的损失描述了银行是如何倒闭的。关于银行的坏消息解释了它们失败的原因。本文将银行建模为由信息不对称引起的。银行对投资机会有着深入的了解。但是银行家，或者至少是一部分，也知道如何窃取。因此，我们将银行业危机建模为由银行渎职的程度（份额）可能特别高的消息引发的。渎职份额遵循马尔可夫过程。当这个时期' s 份额高，代理人理性地提高他们下期份额也高的概率。无论这是否属实，代理人对银行的投资减少，减少了中介和产出。更糟糕的是，坏银行家会感染好银行家。当认为坏银行家比比皆是时，优秀的银行家就没有动力获得高投资回报。存款保险可防止资金流失并稳定经济。但它维持着糟糕的银行业，降低了福利。私人监控有帮助，但不是灵丹妙药。它部分限制了银行业的渎职行为。但这样做效率低下，因为家庭不必要地相互复制彼此昂贵的信息获取。此外，如果私人审计公开，私人监督就会因搭便车而崩溃。面对和不面对最高比例的银行业渎职行为的代际之间的重新分配并不能解决问题。真正改善问题的是政府对银行违规行为的实时披露。这会减轻（如果不能消除）不对称信息问题，从而导致非被盗输出和福利的潜在巨大收益。