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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 explore how expansionary monetary policy (EMP) influences bank loan loss provisioning. We find that banks' discretionary loan loss provisions (DLLPs) increase during periods of EMP. This effect is stronger for banks with greater risk-taking, a larger proportion of influential stakeholders, lower ex-ante transparency of loan loss provisions, and more stringent bank regulation, which is consistent with external stakeholders requiring more conservative and timelier loan loss provisioning. We also find that both the timeliness and the validity of banks' loan loss provisions (LLPs) increase during EMP periods. Our results are robust to the use of instrumental variable estimation and exogenous variations in monetary policy. Lastly, we show that conservative (i.e., higher DLLPs) and timely loan loss provisioning discipline banks from excessive risk-taking during periods of EMP. [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]

We examine the impact of SFAS 133, Accounting for Derivative Instruments and Hedging Activities, on the reporting behavior of commercial banks and the informativeness of their financial statements. We argue that, because mandatory recognition of hedge ineffectiveness under SFAS 133 reduced banks' ability to smooth income through derivatives, banks that are more affected by SFAS 133 rely more on loan loss provisions to smooth income. We find evidence consistent with this argument. We also find that the increased reliance on loan loss provisions for smoothing income has impaired the informativeness of loan loss provisions for future loan defaults and bank stock returns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]