The influence of accounting enforcement on earnings quality of banks: Implications of bank regulation and the global financial crisis

We study the effects of country-level accounting enforcement on earnings quality of banks and whether bank regulation substitutes or complements the effect of accounting enforcement on bank earnings quality. We also examine whether the influence of accounting enforcement on bank earnings quality changed after the global financial crisis. Using a sample of listed banks from 40 countries between 2001 and 2014, and abnormal loan loss provisions (ALLP) as our main proxy for earnings quality, we document a consistent and strong association between accounting enforcement and bank earnings quality. More specifically, an increase in accounting enforcement decreases the level of ALLP and decreases the propensity to manage earnings to avoid losses. Furthermore, we provide empirical evidence that bank regulation complements the effect of accounting enforcement on bank earnings quality. Finally, unlike in the pre-crisis period, we find a positive association between accounting enforcement and income-decreasing ALLP in the post-crisis period, which indicates that stronger accounting enforcement is associated with more conservative earnings and higher loan loss reserves. Overall, our results indicate that accounting enforcement reduces opportunistic earnings management.     

Is knowledge powerful? Evidence from financial education and earnings quality

Previous studies emphasize the importance of investor legal protection on financial reporting quality. We argue that investors’ awareness of their legal rights and understanding of the financial products play complementary roles. Financially well-educated investors are more likely to be able to understand investment-related information and less likely to be tricked, hence can pressure managers to eschew misappropriate behavior. This paper explores the role of investor financial education as a corporate governance mechanism in the context of earnings quality. Using data from 43 countries during the sample period of 1994–2012, we find that earnings quality is higher in countries with better financial education after controlling for various institutional environments. Interestingly, the positive effect of financial education on earnings quality exists only in countries with stronger investor legal protection, indicating a complementary role of financial education. Our study provides evidence on the role of financial education in investor protection.     

Bank size, market concentration, and bank earnings volatility in the US

We examine whether bank earnings volatility depends on bank size and the degree of concentration in the banking sector. Using quarterly data for non-investment banks in the United States for the period 2004Q1-2009Q4 and controlling for the quality of management, leverage, and diversification, we find that bank size reduces return volatility. The negative impact of bank size on bank earnings volatility decreases (in absolute terms) with market concentration. We also find that larger banks located in concentrated markets have experienced higher volatility during the recent financial crisis.     

Institutional development and bank stability: Evidence from transition countries

This paper takes advantage of the dynamic nature of institutional reforms in transition economies and explores the causal effects of those reforms on bank risk. Using a difference-in-difference approach, we show that banks’ financial stability increases substantially after these countries reform their legal institutions, liberalize banking, and restructure corporate governance. We also find that the effects of legal and governance reforms on bank risk may critically depend on the progress of banking reforms. A further examination of alternative risk measures reveals that the increases in financial stability among banks mainly come from the reduction of asset risk. Banks tend to have lower ROA volatility and fewer nonperforming loans after reforming the institutional environment. Finally, we split our sample into foreign and domestic banks and find that the enhancement of financial stability is more pronounced for domestic banks.     

Covid-19 pandemic,a catalyst for aggressive earnings management by banks?

This paper investigates the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on the financial reporting quality of European banks by examining the occurrence of earnings management specifically income smoothing. Using a sample of listed European banks, we employ panel estimation to compare income smoothing in the pre-pandemic period (2019Q1-2019Q4) and the pandemic period (2020Q1-2021Q4). We find that earnings management has significantly increased during the pandemic years, evidencing how the quality of financial reporting is affected during the crisis period. Our findings further suggest that amid the crisis, governance quality limits the incidence of earnings management and emphasizes how the strength of country-level governance and institutional framework affects the quality of financial reporting. Further analysis shows that though banks are inclined to manage earnings during a crisis, nevertheless, the presence of high-quality audit is a limiting factor on the incidence of earnings management in the face of crisis. Our findings which are relevant to investors, market participants, and regulators among others make a significant contribution to the accounting literature and specifically complement the strand of literature on the discretionary use of loan loss provision for earnings management during crisis.     

Economic policy uncertainty and bank earnings opacity

Using a sample of U.S. banks and an index for economic policy uncertainty developed by Baker et al. (2016), we investigate whether economic policy uncertainty is systematically related to bank earnings opacity. When economic policy is relatively uncertain, it is easier for bank managers to distort financial information, as unpredictable economic policy changes make assessing the existence and impact of hidden “adverse news” more difficult for investors and creditors. Economic policy uncertainty also increases the fluctuation in banks’ earnings and cash flows, thus providing additional incentives and opportunities for bank managers to engage in earnings management. Our results show that uncertainty in economic policy is positively related to earnings opacity, proxied by the magnitude of discretionary loan loss provisions and the likelihood of just meeting or beating the prior year’s earnings, and negatively related to the level of accounting conservatism (i.e., the timeliness of recognition of bad news relative to good news). Collectively, our results suggest that economic policy uncertainty leads to greater earnings opacity. We also find that the impact of economic policy uncertainty on financial reporting distortion is less pronounced for stronger banks (i.e., banks with high capital ratios).     

Institutional investors and bank governance: An international analysis of bank earnings management

Despite the growing importance of institutional investors in global capital markets and the link between bank earnings management and financial crash risk, little is known about the role of institutional investors in mitigating bank earnings management. We conduct the first international analysis of this issue using a broad sample of banks and institutional investors. We find a negative relation between institutional ownership and bank earnings management, after controlling for the stringency of a country's bank regulations and other relevant bank and country characteristics. Additionally, institutional ownership is more negatively related to earnings management in countries with more-stringent bank disclosure requirements or when ownership is held by domestic rather than foreign institutional investors. Institutional ownership is also more negatively related to earnings management in countries in which insiders extract more private benefits or when ownership is held by institutional blockholders. Our findings have important policy implications regarding institutional investors' engagement with banks.     

Capital ratios and bank lending: A matched bank approach

This paper examines the impact of bank capital ratios on bank lending by comparing differences in loan growth to differences in capital ratios at sets of banks that are matched based on geographic area as well as size and various business characteristics. We argue that such comparisons are most effective at controlling for local loan demand and other environmental factors. For comparison we also control for local factors using MSA fixed effects. We find, based on data from 2001 to 2011, that the relationship between capital ratios and bank lending was significant during and shortly following the recent financial crisis but not at other times. We find that the relationship between capital ratios and loan growth is stronger for banks where loans are contracting than where loans are expanding. We also show that the elasticity of bank lending with respect to capital ratios is higher when capital ratios are relatively low, suggesting that the effect of capital ratio on bank lending is nonlinear. In addition, we present findings on the relationship between bank capital and lending by bank size and loan type.     

Political institutions and bank risk-taking behavior

This paper examines the impact of political institutions on bank risk-taking behavior. Using an international sample of banks from 98 countries over the period 1998–2007, I document that sound political institutions stimulate higher bank risk-taking. This is consistent with the hypotheses that better political institutions increase banks’ risk by boosting the credit market competition from alternative sources of finance and generating the moral hazard problems due to the expectation of government bailouts in worst economic conditions. While it is contrary to the hypotheses that better political institutions decrease banks’ risk by lowering the government expropriation risk and the information asymmetries between banks and borrowers. The results are robust to a number of sensitivity tests, including alternative proxies of bank risk-taking and political institutions, cross-sectional bank- and country-level regressions, endogeneity concerns of political institutions, country income levels, explicit deposit insurance schemes and sample extension from 1998 to 2014. I also examine the interdependence between political and legal institutions and find that political and legal institutions complement each other to influence bank risk-taking behavior.     

Post-privatization state ownership and bank risk-taking: Cross-country evidence

We examine the relation between state residual ownership and bank risk-taking for privatized banks from 45 countries. Applying propensity score matching, we find that privatized banks tend to exhibit higher levels of risk-taking post-privatization than their publicly listed non-privatized counterparts. Moreover, partially privatized banks exhibit higher levels of risk-taking than fully privatized banks. We also observe a positive and significant relation between the level of residual state ownership and risk-taking. These findings are consistent with the distorted objectives associated with government control, as suggested by the political benefits of control, and with the soft budget constraint views of state ownership. The distortion can be mitigated by the quality of a country's institutional and regulatory environments. Finally, our results show that the effect of state ownership on risk-taking is more pronounced in countries with a higher dominance of state-owned enterprises, and it was more prevalent during the global financial crisis.     

How does competition affect bank systemic risk?

Using bank level measures of competition and co-dependence, we show a robust negative relationship between bank competition and systemic risk. Whereas much of the extant literature has focused on the relationship between competition and the absolute level of risk of individual banks, in this paper we examine the correlation in the risk taking behavior of banks. We find that greater competition encourages banks to take on more diversified risks, making the banking system less fragile to shocks. Examining the impact of the institutional and regulatory environment on bank systemic risk shows that banking systems are more fragile in countries with weak supervision and private monitoring, greater government ownership of banks, and with public policies that restrict competition. We also find that the negative effect of lack of competition can be mitigated by a strong institutional environment that allows for efficient public and private monitoring of financial institutions.     

Bank privatization in developing and developed countries: Cross-sectional evidence on the impact of economic and political factors

We examine how political, institutional, and economic factors are related to a country’s decision to privatize state-owned banks. Using a panel of 101 countries from 1982 to 2000, we find that political factors significantly affect the likelihood of bank privatization only in developing countries. Specifically, in non-OECD countries, bank privatization is more likely the more accountable the government is to its people. In contrast, none of our political variables affects the bank privatization decision in developed countries. Economic factors (such as the quality of the nation’s banking sector) are significant determinants of bank privatization in both OECD and non-OECD nations.     

Bank Consolidation, Internationalization, and Conglomeration: Trends and Implications for Financial Risk

This paper documents trends in bank activity, consolidation, internationalization, and financial firm conglomeration with data on more than 100 countries, and explores the extent to which financial firm risk and systemic risk potential in banking are related to consolidation and conglomeration. The relationship between consolidation, conglomeration and financial risk is documented using financial data on the largest 500 financial firms worldwide and on large banks in about 90 countries. We find that (a) large conglomerate firms did not exhibit levels of risk‐taking lower than smaller and specialized firms in 1995, while they exhibited higher levels of risk‐taking in 2000; (b) highly concentrated banking systems exhibited levels of systemic risk potential higher than less concentrated systems during the 1993–2000 period, and this relationship has strengthened during the 1997–2000 period. We outline research directions aimed at explaining why bank consolidation and conglomeration may not necessarily yield either safer financial firms or more resilient banking systems.     

Institutional failure or market failure?

We investigate the effect of the power of creditors, property rights protection, and institutional quality, on bank profits using a panel of 498 banks from 46 countries. Results show that better institutions and stronger property rights protection reduce bank profits, while stronger power of creditors drives up bank profits significantly. Results imply that better institutions and enhanced property rights protection lead to greater flow of credit allowing firms and investors to undertake more profitable ventures. By extension, stronger creditor rights erect steeper barriers to external finance for firms and investors. National indicators of economic freedoms may be more important to lowering the spread than strict creditor rights. Seemingly, credit markets fail when economic institutions fail or when governments intervene into these markets in ways that impede the safety and soundness of financial transactions and private contracting.     

Foreign institutional investment horizon and earnings management: Evidence from around the world

This paper investigates whether and how the investment horizon relates to foreign institutional monitoring in constraining the self-interested managerial use of earnings management for a sample of firms from 29 countries. We find that equity ownership by long-term foreign institutional investors, irrespective of the strength of institutional controls in their home countries, is associated with lesser earnings management. Accounting for the significance of information asymmetry in earnings management and the ability of long-term foreign institutional investors to mitigate the information disadvantage associated with cross-border equity investments, we find that the constraining effect is stronger in firms with weaker information environments. Finally, using multiple proxies for the country- and firm-level agency, we find that monitoring by long-term, rather than short-term, foreign institutional investors is significantly effective in limiting earnings management in environments of severe agency conflicts. Overall, our findings draw attention to the heterogeneity in the monitoring role played by foreign institutional investors in influencing the financial reporting quality.     

Assessing the effectiveness of financial reporting harmonization for emerging market banks: The case of Banco Serfin

In the last decade there has been a proliferation of financial crises in emerging markets. To some extent, the suddenness and magnitude of some of these crises have been blamed on poor financial reporting standards for bank loan losses. As a result, prior to providing countries with “financial bailout” funds, international investors and international financial organizations have increasingly required that countries harmonize their bank financial reporting standards with international financial reporting standards.Given this trend, this case requires students to assess the effectiveness of efforts to harmonize loan financial reporting (with International Financial Reporting Standards) for Mexican banks during (and after) the country’s financial crisis of the late 1990s. Students are required to assess the extent to which both pre-crisis standards as well as new, post-crisis standards complied with international financial reporting standards. They are also required to assess the impact of the new standards on the reporting practices for loans of one particularly troubled financial institution. Through the examination of this institution’s accounting practices for loans, students obtain a familiarity of the shortcomings of emerging markets’ banks’ loan financial reporting as well as the factors which influence the adoption of international financial reporting standards by emerging market banks.     

Auditor Choice in Politically Connected Firms

We extend recent research on the links between political connections and financial reporting by examining the role of auditor choice. Our evidence that public firms with political connections are more likely to appoint a Big 4 auditor supports the intuition that insiders in these firms are eager to improve accounting transparency to convince outside investors that they refrain from exploiting their connections to divert corporate resources. In evidence consistent with another prediction, we find that this link is stronger for connected firms with ownership structures conducive to insiders seizing private benefits at the expense of minority investors. We also find that the relation between political connections and auditor choice is stronger for firms operating in countries with relatively poor institutional infrastructure, implying that tough external monitoring by Big 4 auditors becomes more valuable for preventing diversion in these situations. Finally, we report that connected firms with Big 4 auditors exhibit less earnings management and enjoy greater transparency, higher valuations, and cheaper equity financing.     

Bank capital and economic activity

Banks argue that holding higher capital will have adverse implications on their lending activities and thereby on economic growth. Yet, the effect of a stronger capital base on economic growth remains largely unsettled. We argue that better capitalized banks improve financial stability conditions and, in dire times, they are able to sustain credit to the economy thereby containing adverse macroeconomic implications. Using various methods, we test for the presence and strength of a financial stability channel and a bank lending channel by drawing evidence from 47 advanced and developing countries over close to two decades. We find that higher capital ratios improve financial stability and help sustain bank lending, ultimately exerting a positive influence on economic activity. These effects on real GDP growth are economically significant, reaching up to 1¼ percentage points for each percentage point acceleration in capital. Our main results are robust to various sensitivity checks, supporting the conclusion that safer banking systems do not bridle economic activity.     

Does competition influence the bank lending channel in the euro area?

This paper examines how competition influences the bank lending channel in the euro area countries. Using a large panel of banks from 12 euro area countries for the period 2002–2010 we analyze the reaction of loan supply to monetary policy actions depending on the degree of bank competition. We find that the effect of monetary policy on bank lending is dependent on bank competition: the transmission of monetary policy via the bank lending channel is less pronounced for banks with extensive market power. Further investigation shows that banks with less market power were more sensitive to monetary policy only before the financial crisis. These results suggest that bank market power has a significant impact on the effectiveness of monetary policy. Therefore, wide variations in the level of bank market power may lead to asymmetric effects of the single monetary policy.     

The impact of religiosity on earnings quality: International evidence from the banking sector

We examine the impact of religiosity on earnings quality, utilising a global sample of 1283 listed banks headquartered in 39 countries and covering the period 2002–2018. Using instrumental variables two-stage least squares regressions, we demonstrate that religiosity has a significant positive impact on banks’ earnings quality. We further show that the impact of religiosity becomes more pronounced among banks headquartered in countries where religion is an important element of national identity and in countries with weak legal protection. We show that the effects of religiosity are more intense during the global financial crisis period. Overall, these findings support the notion that high religiosity tends to reduce unethical activities by managers and can function as an alternative control mechanism for minimising agency costs. Our empirical investigation is robust to alternative model and sample specifications.