We look at internal corporate governance mechanisms and the performance of publicly-traded U.S. banks before and during the financial crisis. Obviously, bank performance decreases dramatically during the crisis. This decrease occurs for all bank size groups. However, the largest banks see the...

This paper examines earnings management at the largest publicly traded bank holding companies in the United States. We find that the use of discretionary loan loss provisions is positively related to a bank's unmanaged cash flow returns, capital ratios, and asset size. In contrast, the use of...