Conventional wisdom holds that the models used to stress test banks should be kept secret to prevent gaming. We show instead that secrecy can be suboptimal, because although it deters gaming, it may also deter socially desirable investment. When the regulator can choose the minimum standard for passing the test, we show that secrecy is suboptimal if the regulator is sufficiently uncertain regarding bank characteristics.When failing the bank is socially costly, then under some conditions, secrecy is suboptimal when the bank's private cost of failure is either sufficiently high or sufficiently low.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.