The recent financial turmoil and the bailouts of some large financial institutions in the US and Europe have raised major concerns that the increased size and complexity of financial institutions may give rise to negative ramifications for systemic risk. In this paper, we investigate whether...

We study public funding of banks and non-financial firms in a time of crisis. We find that bank capitalization is more effective in stabilizing the economy than direct funding to firms, but it also creates larger distortions. We show that the optimal, social-welfare-maximizing, structure of a...