The actuarial profession is increasingly teaming up with financial economists for a fruitful cooperation on the proper valuation of life insurance and pension (L&P) liabilities. This has been a natural consequence of a recent sharply increased focus on market values in financial reports of L&P...

In the face of political pressure in 2009, the FASB relaxed fair value rules to give managers more discretion in measurement of fair value. Supporters argued that the accounting regulatory change would help convey managers' private information on the measurement of fair values, while critics of...

We examine how fair value accounting affects debt contract design, specifically the use and definition of financial covenants in private loan contracts. Using SFAS 159 adoption as our setting, we find that a small but significant proportion of loans (14.5%) modify covenant definitions to exclude...