Prudential Regulatory Regimes, Accounting Standards, and Earnings Management in the Banking Industry

We analyze if a change in accounting standard or a change in prudential regulationimpacts banks’ loan loss provision. We find that, in general, the banks using aprinciples-based accounting standard exhibit a lower level of earnings managementcompared to banks using a rules-based accounting standard. When a country movesfrom pro-cyclical macro-prudential regulations to a dynamic provisioning regime,banks are more likely to set aside a larger amount of loan loss provision for the purposeof income smoothing.