Research shows that bank competition affects general economic and banking-related outcomes, but much less is known about how it impacts firms' risk-taking. By exploiting staggered regulatory reforms across different U.S. states, we show that bank competition significantly reduces borrowers'...

We study the influence of bank competition on U.S. public borrowers' accounting conservatism by exploiting the staggered adoption of the Riegle-Neal Interstate Banking and Branching Efficiency Act (IBBEA) of 1994, which increased the threat of new bank entrants and competition. We find that...