We empirically examine whether the way a bank might use loan loss provisions to smooth its income is influenced by its ownership concentration and the regulatory environment. Using a panel of European commercial banks, we find evidence that banks with more concentrated ownership use...

A panel of 186 European banks is used for the period 1992-2004 to determine if banking behaviors, induced by the capital adequacy constraint and the provisioning system, amplify credit fluctuations. We find that poorly capitalized banks are constrained to expand credit. We also find that loan...

This paper develops a partial equilibrium model of a banking firm to analyze how provisioning rules influence loan market fluctuations. We show that a backward-looking provisioning system amplifies the pro-cyclicality of loan market fluctuations. We demonstrate that, in a forward-looking...

Using a stylized real options model, we show that discretion over the timing of charging off a non-performing loan could be economically justified when collateral values are uncertain and there is a chance of loan recovery. The implied hypothesis of an “uncertainty dependence” aspect in loan...

We compare the different existing approaches to the construction of time-varying Z-score measures, plus an additional alternative one, using a panel of banks for the G20 group of countries covering the period 1992–2009. We examine which ways of estimating the moments used in these different...