We investigate the economic consequences of the implementation of a particular aspect of Basel III in the U.S. Specifically, the Basel III proposal and the corresponding U.S. rule (hereafter referred to as the removal of the AOCI filter) to make the inclusion of unrealized fair value gains and...

The paper analyses the effects of three sets of accounting rules for financial instruments - Old IAS before IAS 39 became effective, Current IAS or US GAAP, and the Full Fair Value (FFV) model proposed by the Joint Working Group (JWG) - on the financial statements of banks. We develop a...

This paper investigates what we can learn from the financial crisis about the link between accounting and financial stability. The picture that emerges ten years after the crisis is substantially different from the picture that dominated the accounting debate during and shortly after the crisis....

Many have argued that financial statements created under an accounting model that measures financial instruments at fair value would not fairly represent a bank's business model. In this study we examine whether financial statements using fair values for financial instruments better describe...

At the peak of the financial crisis in October 2008, the IASB amended IAS 39 to grant companies the option of abandoning fair value recognition for selected financial assets. Using a comprehensive global sample of publicly listed IFRS banks, we find that banks use the reclassification option to...

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...

Investors demand conditional conservatism to restrict managers' ability to opportunistically exploit unverifiable accounting estimates. The fair value estimation process is subject to verifiability concerns when market prices are unavailable, and thus susceptible to managerial discretion. We...

The paper investigates the effects of mark-to-market write-downs by financial institutions on market prices and volumes, as well as the prominent role that illiquidity plays in exacerbating the direct and spillover effects of exit valuation on equity and credit default swaps markets. Using a...

In this paper, we review the existing evidence on the role of fair value accounting in transforming what started as a liquidity shock at the beginning of the Financial Crisis of 2007-08 into a solvency crisis and ultimately systemic bank failures. The paper discusses the academic evidence on the...