This paper uses data from a panel of more than 400 Italian banks for the period 2001 – 2012 to examine the main determinants of loan loss provision (LLP), which are classified as either discretionary (income smoothing, capital management,signalling) or non-discretionary (related to the...

A bank's decision on loan supply and capital structure determines its immediate bankruptcy risk as well as the future availability of internal funds. These internal funds in turn determine a bank's future costs of external finance and future vulnerability to bankruptcy risks. We study these...

Bank regulators and academics have long conjectured the beneficial effects of smoothing in loan loss provisions (i.e., making higher provisions during good times so as to avoid doing so during bad times) for bank lending and stability, while accounting regulators express concerns about its...

Cyclicality in the losses of bank loans is important for bank risk management. Because loans have a different risk profile than bonds, evidence of cyclicality in bond losses need not apply to loans. Based on unique data we show that the default rate and loss given default of bank loans share a...