Abstract
Did regulatory reforms that lowered barriers to competition among US banks increase or decrease the degree to which banks manipulate the information that they disclose to the public and regulators? We find that relaxing regulatory impediments to competition reduced discretionary loan loss provisioning and the frequency with which banks restate financial statements. The results suggest that competition reduces bank opacity, enhancing the ability of markets and regulators to monitor banks.
About Professor Ross Levine
Ross Levine is the Willis H Booth Chair in Banking and Finance at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Milken Institute, Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a member of the European Systemic Risk Board's Advisory Scientific Committee, and on the Steering Committee of the Hoover Institution's Working Group on Intellectual Property, Innovation, and Prosperity.
Ross Levine completed his undergraduate studies at Cornell University in 1982 and received his PhD in economics from UCLA in 1987. He worked at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System until 1990, when he moved to the World Bank. At the Bank, he managed and conducted research and operational programs. Before moving to Berkeley, he worked at Brown University where he was the James and Merryl Tisch Professor of Economics and founding Director of the William R Rhodes Center for International Economics and Finance.
Professor Levine's work focuses on the linkages between financial sector policies, the operation of financial systems, and the functioning of the economy.
Note: Papers, presentation slides and any other material provided by the Guest Lecturer will be made available some time after the lecture at Publications > Media & Speeches > Guest Lectures by Visiting Academics.