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We examine the relation between disaster risk and banks' loan loss provisions (LLP). We propose a disaster risk measure based on the natural disasters declared as major disasters by the Federal Emergency Management Agency over a 15-year span. We theoretically support and empirically validate our measure using three different approaches, including the UN Sendai Framework for disaster risk reduction, which relates disaster risk to natural hazard exposure, vulnerability and capacity, and hazard characteristics. Using more than 445,000 bank-quarter observations, we document that banks located in U.S. counties with higher disaster risk recognize larger LLP after controlling for other bank-level factors related to LLP. We employ several techniques to ensure the robustness of our findings, including difference-in-differences estimation and matched samples. In additional analysis, we explore the characteristics that better enable banks to recognize disaster risk in their LLP, and investigate the consequences of managing disaster risk through LLP. Our results are important, especially because of the increasing concern about disaster risk and because they inform the growing debate on the economic consequences of disaster risk and the ability of the banking system to proactively manage the resulting credit risk through LLP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine whether the facial attractiveness of borrower firms' chief financial officers (CFOs) influences bank loan contracting terms. Using a machine learning‐based algorithm to measure facial attractiveness, we document that firms led by CFOs with greater facial attractiveness receive more favourable loan contracts from their banks. We further show that the relation between CFO facial attractiveness and bank loan contracting terms is significantly influenced by the characteristics of both the borrower and the lender. Collectively, our results suggest that loan contracting is not an entirely rational process, as the 'beauty premium' is at least partly driven by taste‐based discrimination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Masulis and Mobbs (2014), (2015) find that independent directors with multiple directorships allocate their monitoring efforts unequally based on a directorship’s relative prestige. We investigate whether bank loan contract terms reflect such unequal allocation of directors’ monitoring effort. We find that bank loans of firms with a greater proportion of independent directors for whom the board is among their most prestigious have lower spreads, longer maturities, fewer covenants, lower syndicate concentration, lower likelihood of collateral requirement, lower annual loan fees, and higher bond ratings. Our evidence indicates that independent directors’ attention is associated with lower cost of borrowing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine whether and how managers use loan loss provisions to smooth income and to signal their private information about their banks' future prospects. Our paper highlights that the use of the loan loss provision to accomplish more than one objective gives rise to situation-specific costs and benefits of manipulating the provision up or down. We hypothesize that relatively undervalued banks have greater incentives to signal their future prospects than fairly valued banks and that banks' incentives to smooth intensify as premanaged earnings deviate from norms. On the basis of these conjectures, we categorize sample banks into subgroups that are predicted to use loan loss provisions consistent with their situation-specific incentives. This allows us to refine the research methods used in prior research to examine heterogeneous incentives. While we find evidence consistent with the use of loan loss provisions to smooth earnings, particularly when premanaged earnings are extreme, our evidence on signaling is less consistent. In particular, our signaling results depend on the introduction of an interaction term that has not been used in prior research. We also document that the intensity of smoothing (signaling) is not uniform across the sample. In addition to being a function of the incentive to smooth (signal), it also is a function of the incentive to signal (smooth). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: We study whether banks use the allowance for loan losses (ALL) for efficiency or for opportunistic reasons. We find that banks that had higher abnormal ALL during the period prior to the 2007–2009 crisis engaged in less risk taking during the pre‐crisis period and had a lower probability of failure during the crisis period. In testing earnings management to meet or beat earnings benchmarks, we find that abnormal ALL is unrelated to next period's loss avoidance and just meeting or beating the prior year's earnings. Our results suggest that banks use ALL for efficiency and not for opportunistic purposes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine how a firm’s investment behavior relates to its subsequent bank loan contracting.Design/methodology/approach Using a sample of US firms during the period 1992-2011, the authors examine the association between overinvestment (underinvestment) and three characteristics of bank loan contracts: loan spread, collateral requirement, and loan maturity.Findings The authors find that overinvesting firms obtain loans with higher loan spreads. Additional tests show that the effect of overinvestment on loan spreads is generally more pronounced in firms with lower reputation, weaker shareholder rights, and lower institutional ownership. The effect of overinvestment on collateral requirement is mixed, and investment efficiency has no significant relation to loan maturity.Research limitations/implications The results are subject to the following caveats. First, while the study provides empirical evidence that investment efficiency affects bank loan contracting terms, especially the cost of bank loans, the underlying theory is not well-developed. The authors leave it up to future research to provide a theoretical framework to clearly distinguish the cash flow and credit risk effects of past investment behavior from those of existing agency conflicts. Second, due to data limitation, the sample size is small, especially when the authors control for corporate governance measured by G-index and institutional ownership.Practical implications The finding that overinvestment is costly to corporations suggests that managers should consider the potential trade-offs from such investment decisions carefully. The evidence also alerts shareholders and board members to the importance of monitoring management investment decisions. In addition, the authors find that corporate governance moderates the relationship between investment decisions and cost of bank loans, suggesting that it would be beneficial to design effective governance mechanisms to prevent management from empire building and motivate managers to pursue efficient investment strategies.Originality/value First, the findings enhance understanding of the potential economic consequences of overinvestment decisions in the context of a firm’s private debt contracting. The evidence suggests that lenders perceive higher credit risk from overinvestment than from underinvestment, likely because firms squander cash in the current period by investing in (negative net present value) projects that are likely to result in future cash flow problems. Second, the study contributes to the literature on the determinants of bank loans by identifying an observable empirical proxy for uncertainty in future cash flows that increases credit risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]