Loan loss provisions, accounting constraints, and bank ownership structure

Abstract

We examine bank-level changes in the relationship between earnings and loan loss provisioning, a measure of earnings management, following the tightening of accounting constraints associated with the SEC's 1998 SunTrust Bank decision. By exploiting both temporal variation in the regulatory environment and cross-sectional variation in bank ownership structure, we find evidence that shortly after the SEC action, the relationship between earnings and provisions weakened for publicly-held banks but not for privately-held banks, consistent with reduced earnings management among publicly-held banks only. This difference does not persist over time, with evidence indicating a weakening of the relationship for both ownership types.

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