Depositors Discipline through Interest Costs during Good and Bad Times: the Role of the Guarantor of Last Resort1

We investigate whether the public sector’s ability as the guarantor of last resort (GLR) to help banks or to guarantee banks’ liabilities affects the sensitivity of interest costs to bank fundamentals. We use a global bank sample and find that the sensitivity is an increasing function of GLR risk, regardless of the method applied to describe this risk. Therefore, our results indicate that increased levels of GLR risk might foster market monitoring by depositors.