Commemorating the 50‐Year Anniversary of Ball and Brown (1968): The Evolution of Capital Market Research over the Past 50 Years

We commemorate the 50th anniversary of Ball and Brown [1968] by chronicling its impact on capital market research in accounting. We trace the evolution of various research paths that post–Ball and Brown [1968] researchers took as they sought to build on the foundation laid by Ball and Brown [1968] to create a body of research on the usefulness, timeliness, and other properties of accounting numbers. We discuss how those paths often link back to the groundwork laid and questions originally posed in Ball and Brown [1968].     

Stealing Deposits: Deposit Insurance,Risk‐Taking,and the Removal of Market Discipline in Early 20th‐Century Banks

Deposit insurance reduces liquidity risk but can increase insolvency risk by encouraging reckless behavior. Several U.S. states installed deposit insurance laws before the creation of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and those laws applied only to some depository institutions within those states. These experiments present a unique testing ground for investigating the effect of deposit insurance. We show that deposit insurance removed market discipline constraining uninsured banks. Taking advantage of World War I's rise in world agricultural prices, insured banks increased their insolvency risk and competed aggressively for deposits. When prices fell after the war, the insurance systems collapsed and suffered high losses.     

The Relative Termination Experience of Adjustable to Fixed-Rate Mortgages

Our study uses a multinomial logit model to analyze the concurrent termination experience of adjustable-rate and fixed-rate mortgages. A new set of ARM-specific interactive determinants expands the conventional FRM specification to isolate the unique termination behavior of ARMs. We find that expected rate adjustments and large lifetime caps are positively related to ARM termination probabilities while long adjustment frequencies are inversely related. Caps, both periodic and lifetime, have a secondary, inverse effect on termination probabilities when interest-rate movements exceed cap limits. The model also shows that interest-rate expectations affect FRM terminations more strongly than ARM terminations.     

STRATEGIC BEHAVIORS TOWARD ENVIRONMENTAL REGULATION: A CASE OF TRUCKING INDUSTRY

We used trucking industry’s response to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s acceleration of 2004 diesel emissions standards as a case study to examine the importance of accounting for regulatees’ strategic behaviors in drafting of environmental regulations. Our analysis of the time series data of aggregate U.S. and Canada heavy‐duty truck production data from 1992 through 2003 found that heavy‐duty trucks production increased by 20%–23% in the 6 mo prior to the date of compliance. The increases might be due to truck operators pre‐buying trucks with less expensive but noncompliant engines and behaving strategically in anticipation of other uncertainties. (JEL L51, Q25)