Corporate governance mechanisms designed to alleviate manager‐shareholder agency conflicts can worsen shareholder‐bondholder conflicts. This study examines how one such corporate governance mechanism, monitoring by large outside shareholders, influences the choice between public and private debt. I conjecture and find that firms with higher outside blockholdings are inclined to choose bank loans over public debt when they borrow, consistent with the notion that banks are better monitors than public debt markets. I also find that bank loans carry less price protection than corporate bonds against increased agency risk associated with outside blocks. Corroborating the monitoring story, I document that bank loans contain more accounting‐based covenants and dividend restriction provisions for firms with higher outside blockholdings than for those with lower blockholdings. I find no such relation for public debt covenants. This supports that banks' monitoring of their loans counters the agency risk caused by blockholders. This study extends prior research that associates governance mechanisms with agency costs of debt, by incorporating lenders' differential monitoring mechanisms in the overall corporate governance system.

We investigate how private information and monitoring affect the role of accounting quality in reducing the investment-cash flow sensitivity. We argue that access to private information and direct restrictions on investments are likely to affect the extent to which accounting quality reduces financing constraints. Our results suggest that for financially constrained firms, banks' access to private information decreases the value of accounting quality. We further find that, for both financially constrained and unconstrained firms, covenants directly restricting capital expenditures also mitigate the importance of accounting quality. Our results suggest that when information asymmetry problems are likely to be the largest, accounting quality is most important. However, the importance of accounting quality is mitigated if outside capital suppliers have access to private information and is eliminated if they impose contractual restrictions on investment. We also provide evidence that banks' access to private information reduces the cash flow sensitivity of cash and mitigates the importance of accounting quality in reducing this sensitivity. This additional evidence suggests that our investment-cash flow sensitivity results are not driven by measurement error of the investment opportunity set.

We investigate how private information and monitoring affect the role of accounting quality in reducing the investment–cash flow sensitivity. We argue that access to private information and direct restrictions on investments are likely to affect the extent to which accounting quality reduces financing constraints. Our results suggest that, for financially constrained firms, banks’ access to private information decreases the value of accounting quality. We further find that, for both financially constrained and unconstrained firms, covenants directly restricting capital expenditures also mitigate the importance of accounting quality. Our results suggest that, when information asymmetry problems are likely to be the largest, accounting quality is most important. However, the importance of accounting quality is mitigated if outside capital suppliers have access to private information and is eliminated if they impose contractual restrictions on investment. We also provide evidence that banks’ access to private information reduces the cash flow sensitivity of cash and mitigates the importance of accounting quality in reducing this sensitivity. This additional evidence suggests that our investment–cash flow sensitivity results are not driven by measurement error of the investment opportunity set.

Based on a linear provision/charge-off association and V-shaped scatterplots of these variables against nonperforming loan changes, Basu et al. (2020) argue that nonperforming loan changes mis-measure credit quality and linear provision models are mis-specified. They conclude that residual asymmetry controlling for charge-offs results from loan heterogeneity and the real estate crisis. Using additions to nonaccruals to measure credit quality, we find a linear association with provisions, that controlling for charge-offs induces misspecification, and no evidence of provision asymmetry. These results highlight the importance of basing hypotheses and causal models on theoretical underpinnings rather than on plots subject to known fallacies.

We survey research on banks׳ financial accounting. After providing a brief background of the theoretical models and accounting and regulatory institutions underlying the bank accounting literature, we review three streams of empirical research. Specifically we review studies associating bank financial reporting with the valuation and risk assessments, associating bank financial reporting discretion with regulatory capital and earnings management, and examining banks’ economic decisions under differing accounting regimes. We discuss what we have already learned and about what else we would like to know. We also discuss methodological challenges associated with predicting the effects of alternative accounting and regulatory capital regimes.

Banks can decrease their future capital inadequacy concerns by reducing lending. The capital crunch theory predicts that lending is particularly sensitive to regulatory capital constraints during recessions, when regulatory capital declines and external-financing frictions increase. Regulators and policy makers argue that the current loan loss provisioning rules magnify this pro-cyclicality. Exploiting variation in the delay in expected loss recognition under the current incurred loss model, we find that reductions in lending during recessionary relative to expansionary periods are lower for banks that delay less. We also find that smaller delays reduce the recessionary capital crunch effect. These results hold across management quality partitions.

We investigate delegated monitoring by examining the determinants and effects of including cross-acceleration provisions in public debt contracts. We find that cross-acceleration provision use depends on borrowers' going concern relative to liquidation values, debt repayment structures, credit quality, and financial reporting quality. This suggests that the use of cross-acceleration provisions increases when the costs of cascading defaults are lower, the conflicts between creditor classes are higher, and the benefits of delegating monitoring to banks are higher. We also find a lower interest rate on public debt contracts with cross-acceleration provisions, but the rate reduction depends on borrowers' financial reporting quality.

We document potential cross-sectional differences in how expected loss accounting will affect provision timeliness to provide important policy insights and contribute to the literature regarding the estimation of the expected loss model adoption impact and provision timeliness determinants. Our findings that analyst provision forecasts incrementally predict future nonperforming loans (NPLs) and market returns suggest that the incurred loss provision does not incorporate all available future loss information. Higher incremental coefficients on provision forecasts for banks with greater unrecognized future losses and incurred loss constraints suggest CECL could affect cross-sectional provision timeliness differences by removing these constraints. Specifically, the provision forecast and future NPL association increases with banks' unconstrained future loss estimates reflected in loan fair value disclosures and incurred loss constraints indicated by heterogeneous loans individually reviewed for impairment. This association also increases with EPS forecast errors, but decreases with target price and NPL forecast errors.

We explore how an accounting measure of information asymmetry between lead and participating lenders influences syndication structures by examining whether lead lenders’ commercial and industrial (C&I) loan-loss provision validity affects the fraction of loans they retain. We first conduct multiple tests showing that C&I provision validity reflects banks’ underlying screening and monitoring effectiveness. We then find lead lenders’ loan share decreases with C&I provision validity, but not with non-C&I provision validity. Consistent with an information effect, we further find this association is attenuated by (i) alternative information sources about the borrowers and (ii) previous lead/participant relationships and participant/borrower relationships.

We investigate how high-profile accounting frauds affect peer firms' investment. We document that peers react to the fraudulent reports by increasing investment during fraud periods. We show that this finding is not driven by frauds that have a higher ex ante likelihood of detection or by an association between fraud and investment booms. In addition, we find that peers’ investments increase in fraudulent earnings overstatements, and in industries with higher investor sentiment, lower cost of capital and higher private benefits of control. We also find evidence consistent with equity analysts potentially facilitating the spillover effect.