Central banking reform and overcoming the moral hazard problem: the case of Brazil

ABSTRACT The implicit assumption that governments will bailout financial institutions under distress can generate negative incentives for the development of a sound financial system. This paper begins from the premise that these negative incentives, which create a situation of moral hazard, is essentially a political problem rather than a technical problem over generating correct institutional incentives. In the Brazilian case, we argue the current administration of Fernando Henrique Cardoso was only able to significantly reduce its moral hazard problem in the financial sector through distancing its political relationship with two important political actors: the private financial sector and state governors. The ability of the government to eliminate the implicit assumption of an eventual Central Bank bailout over public and private commercial banks was only made possible through a series of political conditions, which includes the end of hyper-inflation under the Real Plan, that reduced the government’s dependence upon those two important political actors.