We examine the real effects of FAS 166 and FAS 167 on banks’ loan‐level mortgage approval and sale decisions. Effective in 2010, these standards tightened the accounting for securitizations and consolidation of securitization entities, respectively, causing banks to recognize an estimated $811 billion of securitized assets on balance sheet. We find that banks that recognize more securitized assets exhibit larger decreases in mortgage approval rates and larger increases in mortgage sale rates. These effects significantly exceed those of banks’ off–balance sheet securitized assets, consistent with our results being driven by the consolidation of securitization entities rather than by securitization per se. We conduct tests that help rule out the financial crisis as an alternative explanation for our results. Further analyses suggest that mechanisms underlying the results include consolidating banks’ reduced regulatory capital adequacy, increased market discipline, and consequent desire not to recognize high‐risk mortgages on balance sheet.

Exploiting differential interstate-branching deregulation across contiguous counties of adjacent states, we investigate the effect of entry threat on incumbent banks’ loan-loss provisions. Incumbents exposed to entry threat have offsetting incentives; lower provisions make their loan-underwriting quality appear better, deterring entry, but make local economic conditions appear better, encouraging entry. We find that the incentive to increase apparent loan-underwriting quality dominates on average. We further find that this incentive is stronger in counties with a higher proportion of heterogeneous loans, while the other incentive dominates in counties with both low heterogeneous loans and highly volatile economic conditions.

Effective in 2009, SFAS 161 requires enhanced disclosures about derivative use and hedging activities. We test for changes to the information environment of firms whose disclosure policy is unaffected by this standard directly. Using a sample of non-users of derivatives, we find an increase in stock liquidity after their critical customers expand derivative disclosures under SFAS 161. The effect persists for one year and becomes insignificant in subsequent years as the firms dial back their voluntary disclosure. The effect is also more salient for firms that have stronger economic links with their customers and for firms whose customers exhibit more significant improvements in derivative disclosures. The findings suggest that the mandatory derivative disclosures due to SFAS 161 lead to short-term positive information externalities along supply chains. Data Availability: Data are available from the public sources cited in the text.

Mortgage fraud was a leading force behind the 2008 financial crisis. We measure the fraudulent income overstatement at the bank-ZIP Code-year level as the difference in the local growth between reported income in mortgage applications and the income based on IRS data. We find that overstated income is positively associated with banks’ internal control weaknesses over financial reporting and negatively associated with subsequent remediation of such weaknesses. The associations are concentrated among banks that integrate their accounting and operation processes, as proxied by the adoption of an Enterprise Resource Planning system. Finally, using the removal of internal control provisions in the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Improvement Act in 2005 as a shock to internal control quality, we find that affected banks experience increased income overstatement on mortgage applications. Data Availability: Data used in this study are available from the public and proprietary sources identified in the article. Access to proprietary data is subject to the relevant providers’ licensing restrictions.

In 2013, the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau released a database of consumer complaints filed against banks under its supervision (“CFPB banks”). We find that after the disclosure, rival banks exhibit a greater increase in mortgage approval rates in markets with more intensive mortgage complaints about CFPB banks. The effect is weaker when rivals have more expertise in the local market, are less concerned about credit risk due to mortgage sales, and locate in areas with more alternative information about the CFPB banks. The effect is concentrated in severe complaints and complaints related to loan underwriting practices. In addition to approving more loans, rivals also open more branches and are more likely to post a job opening in these markets. The findings suggest that these banks learn from the nonfinancial disclosures about operational deficiencies of peers (i.e., CFPB banks) in local markets, which alleviates their adverse selection concern about expanding.

This study examines the relation between performance covenants in private debt contracting and conservative accounting under adverse selection. We find that under severe adverse selection (i.e., high information asymmetry), accounting conservatism and performance covenants act as complements to signal that the borrower is unlikely to appropriate wealth from the lender. No such relation obtains in a low information asymmetry regime. We further show that in the high information asymmetry regime, borrowers with high levels of conservatism and tight performance covenants generally enjoy lower interest rate spreads than borrowers with low levels of conservatism and loose performance covenants. Consistent with our signaling theory, in the high information asymmetry regime, borrowers with high levels of conservatism and tight performance covenants are less likely to make abnormal payouts to shareholders. Our empirical results are robust to alternative measures of conservatism and covenant restrictiveness.

This study examines the relation between performance covenants in private debt contracting and conservative accounting under adverse selection. We find that under severe adverse selection (i.e., high information asymmetry), accounting conservatism and performance covenants act as complements to signal that the borrower is unlikely to appropriate wealth from the lender. No such relation obtains in a low information asymmetry regime. We further show that in the high information asymmetry regime, borrowers with high levels of conservatism and tight performance covenants generally enjoy lower interest rate spreads than borrowers with low levels of conservatism and loose performance covenants. Consistent with our signaling theory, in the high information asymmetry regime, borrowers with high levels of conservatism and tight performance covenants are less likely to make abnormal payouts to shareholders. Our empirical results are robust to alternative measures of conservatism and covenant restrictiveness.

Contracting parties, such as the firm and its supplier, have cost-reducing incentives to make investments that support the unique transactions between them. However, to the extent that one party may renege on its contractual obligations, the other party incurring the cost of the relationship-specific investment bears additional risk and is less willing to invest such that sub-optimal investment occurs. In countries where enforceability of explicit contracts is particularly weak, parties have incentives to signal their willingness to fulfill implicit claims and maintain long-term relationships. We predict that firms engage in income smoothing to send such a signal to their suppliers. Consistent with these expectations, we find that firms that both reside in countries with weak contract enforceability and operate in industries with a greater need for relationship-specific investments tend to smooth reported income more. We further decompose income smoothing into “informational” and “garbled” components and find that results are driven by the informational component of income smoothing. Our results support the important role that accruals play in providing information in the presence of incomplete contracts.

Recent theoretical and empirical studies suggest that blockholders (shareholders with ownership ≥ 5 percent) exert governance through the threat of exit. Blockholders have strong incentives to gather private information and sell their shares when managers are perceived to underperform. To prevent blockholders from selling their shares and the firm from suffering a stock price decline, managers align their actions with the interests of shareholders. As a result of the greater manager‐shareholder alignment, managers' actions are more likely to be in shareholders' best interest, and consequently there is less need for managers to manipulate earnings. Consistent with these predictions from economic theory, we find evidence that as exit threat increases, firms have higher financial reporting quality. Theory also predicts that the impact of blockholders' exit threat on financial reporting quality (FRQ) should increase as the manager's wealth is tied more closely to the stock price, and this is what we find. Our study contributes to the research on the impact of shareholders on FRQ and to an emerging literature on the impact of blockholders in financial markets. Blockholders play an important role in managers' reporting outcomes through their actions as informed investors.

In the wake of the financial crisis, policymakers expressed the concern that the incurred loss model delays loan loss recognition to economic stress periods and thereby exacerbates banks’ lending contraction during these periods. Addressing this concern, the FASB issued Accounting Standards Update 2016-13, which requires large public banks to accrue for loan losses using the current expected credit loss (CECL) approach starting in January 2020. We hypothesize and find that banks that adopted CECL prior to the COVID-19 pandemic increased loan loss provisions and reduced loan growth during the accompanying recession more than other banks. The lending contraction is stronger for adopting banks with low regulatory capital and low loan impairment and is primarily driven by commercial loans. Lastly, we find that counties in which CECL-adopting banks have higher market share experience larger increases in unemployment rates during the recession and slower subsequent recoveries. Data Availability: Data are available from the public sources cited in the text.