ABSTRACT This paper empirically examines the association between bank capital and banks' monitoring effort. We use four proxies to measure the unobservable monitoring effort. Two of the proxies are based on loan quality (ex post outcomes of monitoring effort). The other two proxies are based on salary expense (ex ante proxies intended to capture the quality and quantity of labor input into monitoring effort). Using a bank and time fixed effects estimation, we find a positive association between bank capital and each of our measures of monitoring effort. We find that this association is more pronounced for smaller banks and banks that engage in higher levels of relationship lending. Numerous additional tests and robustness checks, including matched sample analysis and instrumental variable approach to address endogeneity, confirm our main findings. Overall, our evidence is consistent with the prediction in Mehran and Thakor (2011) that banks that keep higher capital monitor more. JEL Classifications: G21; G32; M41.

We examine the relation between bank holdings of mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and MBS prices. Theory suggests feedback between MBS holdings and underlying asset markets can be aggravated by mark-to-market accounting. We measure feedback by the relation between asset returns and the changes in bank MBS holdings. Consistent with the existence of feedback effects related to mark-to-market, we find that for banks with high MBS, more nonperforming loans, and lower total capital ratio, changes in bank MBS positions are positively associated with changes in MBS prices and that this relation is reduced after the April 2009 mark-to-market rule clarification. To assess the effect of feedback on shareholder value, we test whether the stock-price response of banks to the announcement of the mark-to-market accounting rule clarification is associated with the intensity of feedback behavior. We find that the stock market reaction to the rule change is more positive for banks with more MBS, higher nonperforming loans and higher pre-rule-change feedback. We also find positive bond-price reactions to the rule change. Overall, our results suggest feedback related to mark-to-market accounting had a measurable effect on shareholder value.