Dynamic Coordination and Intervention Policy

We model a dynamic economy with strategic complementarity among investors and endogenous government interventions that mitigate coordination failures. We establish equilibrium existence and uniqueness, and show that one intervention can affect another through altering the public-information structure. A stronger initial intervention helps subsequent interventions through increasing the likelihood of positive news, but also leads to negative conditional updates. Our results suggest optimal policy should emphasize initial interventions when coordination outcomes tend to correlate. Neglecting informational externalities of initial interventions results in over- or under-interventions, depending on intervention costs. Moreover, saving smaller funds before saving the big ones costs less and generates greater informational benefits under certain circumstances. Our paper is informative of multiple intervention programs such as those enacted during the 2008 financial crisis.