This study examines whether accounting changes result in changes in the economic behaviour of financial institutions. The results of several papers examining how banks respond to accounting changes that affect their regulatory capital ratios are consistent with Furfine's (2000) summary that...

I identify issues that bank regulators need to consider if fair value accounting is used for determining bank regulatory capital and when making regulatory decisions. In financial reporting, US and international accounting standard setters have issued several disclosure and measurement and...

Advances in risk measurement technology have reshaped financial markets and the functioning of the financial system. More recently, they have been reshaping the prudential framework. Looking forward, they have the potential to reshape financial reporting too. Recent initiatives to improve...

The introduction of a new accounting standard for financial instruments has raised a number of issues related to the application of fair value principles. This paper discusses some of these issues which are generally related to the fact that fair values are not always easily defined or readily...

This paper explains why the question is how, not if, today's financial statements should include estimates of the future. Including such estimates is not new, but their use is increasing. This increase results primarily because standard setters believe asset and liability measures that reflect...

Among the policy responses to the global financial crisis, the international provision of US dollars via central bank swap lines stands out. This paper studies the build-up of stresses on banks' balance sheets that led to this coordinated policy response. Using the BIS international banking...

A large body of literature has shown that small firms experience difficulties in accessing the credit market due to informational asymmetries. Banks can overcome these asymmetries through relationship lending, or at least mitigate their effects by asking for collateral. Small firms, especially...

This paper examines the power of different contractual mechanisms to influence an originator’s choice of costly effort to screen borrowers when the originator plans to securitise its loans. The analysis focuses on three potential mechanisms: the originator holds a “vertical slice”, or...

This paper reviews the market reaction to bank rescue packages announced in six countries between October 2008 and January 2009. The study distinguishes the impact on creditors as seen in the change of CDS spreads from the impact on shareholders as seen in the movement of bank stock prices....

In this paper we propose a framework for measuring and stress testing the systemic risk of a group of major financial institutions. The systemic risk is measured by the price of insurance against financial distress, which is based on ex ante measures of default probabilities of individual banks...