The Decline of Too Big to Fail

For globally systemically important banks (GSIBs) with US headquarters, we find significant reductions in market-implied probabilities of government bailout after the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), along with roughly 170% higher wholesale debt financing costs for these banks after controlling for insolvency risk. Since the GFC, bank creditors appear to expect much larger losses in the event that a GSIB approaches insolvency. In this sense, we estimate a decline of “too big to fail.”