In this paper, we use accounting fundamentals to measure systematic risk of distress. Our main testable prediction—that this risk increases with the probability of recessionary failure, P(R|F)—is based on a stylized model that guides our empirical analyses. We first apply the lasso method to...

Several studies have addressed, with conflicting results, the issue of procyclical effects of loan loss provisions in the past. More recently, the weak performance of incurred loss models in the financial crisis has given rise to a new debate on the sound design of credit risk provisioning...

We develop and test explanations for sources of intertemporal variation in the information content of aggregate earnings and how that variation explains variation in the relation between aggregate earnings growth and market returns over time. We find that the correlation between aggregate...

Our analytical description of how banks' responses to asset price changes can result in procyclical leverage reveals that for banks with a binding regulatory leverage constraint, absent differences in regulatory risk weights across assets, procyclical leverage does not occur. For banks without a...

The Financial Accounting Standards Board issued the current expected credit loss (CECL) standard, which requires banks to take a forward-looking approach to recognizing life-of-loan losses upon loan origination. Using bank mortgage approval decisions at the ZIP code level and a...

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...

We find that that the Current Expected Credit Loss (CECL) standard would slightlydampen fluctuations in bank lending over the economic cycle. In particular, if the CECLstandard had always been in place, we estimate that lending would have grown more slowlyleading up to the financial crisis and...

The paper discusses two issues related to “growth”. Both have arguably not been dealt with adequately in the literature. The first concerns growth and accruals. Research practice combines two components of accruals, asset accruals and liability accruals. This simplification causes problems...

We find that business cycles drive productive economic churn. During recessions, firms with high previous abnormal investment scale back while firms with low abnormal investment scale up. These findings are consistent with an improvement in investment efficiency over the business cycle. Our...