Anecdotal evidence that the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) influences the lending behavior of financial institutions has not been uniformly supported by empirical research. We revisit this issue by evaluating changes in low-income mortgage lending at commercial banks over the 1992-96 period....

We hypothesize that features of European capital markets used to distinguish market reliance and investor protection have predictably influenced emerging national differences in bank capitalization, growth, and choice of income-producing activities. We characterize countries' capital regimes as...

The paper analyses the performance outcomes on foreign credits made by UK-owned banks to borrowers in 17 foreign countries between 1991 and 2000. The analysis is unique in its use of bank-specific data on overdue credits in individual countries. Results indicate that credit repayment in a given...

Significant disagreement exists as to whether the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) influences the lending behavior of financial institutions. We conduct empirical tests on the lending of banks directly affected by regulatory enforcement of the CRA those experiencing upgrades or downgrades in...

We examine the latitude that regulators provide to banks in how they manage loan loss allowances. Empirical tests on subsamples of 64,807 annual observations of banks, 2006 to 2015, show that correlations of provisions for loan losses and subsequent charge-offs, which are expected under...

Confidential examination files of 41 community banks that changed external audit status under internal controls show that their decisions respond to discipline imposed by regulators and that discipline seldom involves factors related to financial reporting. This suggests that empirical evidence...

We examine subjective supervisory assessments of managerial performance in the banking industry. Results of empirical tests show that better assessments are (i) positively associated with decisions made by examiners to upgrade relatively objective bank performance ratings; (ii) negatively...

Confidential examination files show that the likelihood of a bank to voluntarily choose to be externally audited under internal controls is positively associated with disciplinary actions imposed against it by supervisors and that such actions seldom involve financial reporting. This identifies...