Information quality and crises in regime-change games

Abstract

When crises potentially originate from coordination failures, does a deterioration in the quality of the information available to market participants contribute towards instability? We address this question in a general global game of regime change with a unique equilibrium and illustrate the implications in a debt rollover application. We show that a reduction in the quality of information increases the likelihood of regime change, thus reducing stability, when the net payo in the case of a successful attack is more sensitive to the fundamentals than the net payo in the case of status quo survival. We also discuss welfare implications.