Theory makes ambiguous predictions about the relationship between market structure and competitiveness of the banking system and banking sector stability. Empirical studies focusing on individual countries provide similarly ambiguous results, while cross-country studies point mostly to a...

The financial crisis of 2008 had a profound effect on the US banking industry, causing financial distress and the failure of a large number of banks. In this paper, we investigate whether or not banking institutions smoothed their reported earnings upward through the utilization of loan loss...