We propose a novel role for accounting covenants in credit lines. Accounting covenants protect banks against severe aggregate liquidity shocks and firms against losing liquidity at will of banks. During aggregate liquidity shocks, banks need to ration liquidity, and covenants allow banks to...

The traditional approach to the stress testing of financial institutions focuses on capital adequacy and solvency. Liquidity stress tests have been applied in parallel to and independently from solvency stress tests, based on scenarios which may not be consistent with those used in solvency...

This paper examines the association between discretionary capital buffers, capital requirements, and risk for European banks. The discretionary buffers are banks' own buffers, or headroom: the difference between reported and required capital. I exploit capital requirements data that banks...

Stress tests are assessments conducted by regulators to determine whether banks have sufficient capital buffers to withstand severe recessions. Unlike ordinary bank examinations, stress tests involve forward-looking scenarios and their results are publicly disclosed. This paper is the first...

Basel III introduces the Liquidity Coverage Ratio (LCR) and the Net Stable Funding Ratio (NSFR) to enhance bank liquidity regulation. This paper investigates whether accounting rules have pro-cyclical effects on these liquidity requirements. By rearranging the formulae for the LCR and the NSFR,...

This study examines the relationship between accounting credibility and firms' ability to fund their investments. Theory suggests that credible reporting resulting from external audits enables firms to attract external funds needed for their investments. The tests exploit monetary policy...

The German Commercial Code (HGB) allows banks to build visible reserves for general banking risks according to section 340g HGB. These GBR reserves may, in addition to their risk provisioning function, be used to enhance capital endowment, for internal financing, signaling or earnings management...

This paper examines the capital market consequences of mandatory disclosures of banks' liquidity and the resulting changes in banks' behavior. Employing a hand-collected sample of the disclosures of banks borrowing from the US Federal Reserve Discount Window (DW), I find that these disclosures...

Regulatory capital guidelines allow for loan loss reserves to be added back as capital. The evidence in this paper suggests that the influence of loan loss reserves added back as regulatory capital (hereafter referred to as “add-backs”) on bank risk cannot be explained by either economic...

This paper's objective is to study the relationship between bank credit risk and financial performance and the contribution of risky lending to lower bank profitability and liquidity. The sample data comes from the Mergent Online database, which stores ownership, executive, and financial...