Within bank activities, which is normally defined as the joint exercise of savings collection and credit supply, risk-taking is natural, as in many human activities. Among risks related to credit intermediation, credit risk assumes particular importance. It is most simply defined as the...

In this paper, we ask how firms’ optimal debt structure responds to a change in the bankruptcy regime. While existing work shows that this relationship is dependent on the ex-ante liquidation value of a firm, we demonstrate that the ownership of lenders they are connected to also matters. We...

How do developments at lending institutions that alter the way they grant and monitor loans influence their borrowers' financial reporting quality (FRQ)? We examine this question by investigating the influence that privatizations of Chinese state banks (CSBs) had on the quality of their...

Banks collect private information for the purpose of monitoring borrowers. However, we have little evidence on the sources of private information they use. This study investigates whether and how banks use private information about regulatory oversight of public disclosures through the SEC...

We examine how management stock options affect corporate risk taking. We exploit exogenous variation in stock option grants generated by FAS 123R and use loan spreads to infer risk taking. Using a difference-in-differences approach, we find that the spreads of loans taken by firms that did not...

An important question in banking is how strict supervision affects bank lending and in turn local business activity. Supervisors forcing banks to recognize losses could choke off lending and amplify local economic woes. But stricter supervision could also change how banks assess and manage...

This paper examines banks' disclosures and loss recognition in the financial crisis and identifies several core issues for the link between accounting and financial stability. Our analysis suggests that, going into the financial crisis, banks' disclosures about relevant risk exposures were...

An important question in banking is how strict supervision affects bank lending and in turn local business activity. Forcing banks to recognize losses could choke off lending and amplify local economic woes, especially after financial crises. But stricter supervision could also lead to changes...

Academic research on loan loss provisioning and the earlier incurred credit losses (ICL) model has a long tradition in the literature. Academic criticism of the ICL was taken up by the Financial Stability Board after the financial crisis of 2018, leading to a fundamental revision of accounting...

Pursuing delinquent borrowers requires considerable effort, and creditors may lack the incentive to exert this costly effort in uncompetitive banking sectors. To examine this, we use a uniquely large dataset of public and private corporate bankruptcy filings spanning a banking-sector reform that...