In light of the current debate about the link between accounting and financial stability, we investigate the determinants of procyclical book leverage for US commercial and savings banks. We find that total asset growth and GDP growth are both positively related to book leverage growth. Our...

In light of the current debate about the link between accounting and financial stability, we investigate the determinants of procyclical book leverage for U.S. commercial and savings banks. We find that total asset growth and GDP growth are both positively related to book leverage growth. Our...

We investigate three prominent German bank failures in the financial crisis of 2007-2008, IKB Deutsche Industriebank, Landesbank Sachsen, and Hypo Real Estate (HRE). The cases provide a unique setting to analyze the interrelation between financial reporting, regulation, and financial stability....

We provide an extensive analysis of the payout policy of U.S. banks during the crisis to examine potential risk-shifting and signaling motives of banks. We estimate an empirical model of bank payouts to assess the extent to which changes in payouts are commensurate with worsening fundamentals....

We propose a novel role for accounting covenants in credit lines. Accounting covenants protect banks against severe aggregate liquidity shocks and firms against losing liquidity at will of banks. During aggregate liquidity shocks, banks need to ration liquidity, and covenants allow banks to...

A common response to systemic shocks are accounting changes that reduce the impact of losses on banks’ regulatory capital. We show that these accounting changes can increase banks' incentive to raise capital. Banks trade off the cost of raising equity and the cost of violating regulatory...