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 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...

EU politicians pressured the IASB to change the accounting rules for financial assets at the peak of the financial crisis in October 2008. The new rules enabled banks to forgo the recognition of unrealized fair value losses through reclassifications. This paper puts the ensuing regulatory relief...

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...

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...

We investigate the effects of countercyclical prudential buffers on bank risk-taking. We exploit the introduction of dynamic loan loss provisioning in Spain, mandating that banks use historical average loss rates in their estimation of loan loss provisions. We find that dynamic loan loss...

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...

I study how liquidity information influences banks' liquidity holdings, using the disclosure of bank liquidity coverage ratio (LCR) mandated for a group of large US banks. While the disclosure rule aims to increase liquidity in the banking system, I find that non-disclosing banks responded by...

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,...

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...