Fuelling fire sales? Prudential regulation and crises: evidence from the Italian market

The stability of Russian banking sector is threatened by three negative tendencies - overheating of the credit market, significant decrease of banks capital adequacy ratios, and growing problems associated with banks lending to affiliated non-financial corporations. The co-existence of these processes reflects the crisis of the model of private investments in Russian banking sector, which was observed during the last 20 years. This paper analyzes the measures of the Bank of Russia undertaken to maintain the stability of the banking sector using the methodology of credit risk stress-testing. Based on this methodology we conclude that the Bank of Russias actions can prevent the overheating of the credit market, but they can also lead to undesirable effects: further expansion of the government ownership in Russian banking sector and substitution of domestic credit supply by cross-border corporate borrowings. The later weakens the competitive positions of Russian banks. We propose a set of measures to harmonize the prudential regulation of banks. Our suggestions rely on design and further implementation of the programs aimed at developing new markets for financial services provided by Russian banks to their corporate and retail customers. The estimated effects of proposed policy measures are both the increase in profitability and capitalization of Russian banks and the decrease of banks demand for government support.

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The relation between R&D accounting treatment and the risk of the firm: Evidence from the Italian market

FINANCIAL REPORTING ◽

10.3280/fr2014-001002 ◽

2014 ◽

pp. 33-54 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Riccardo Cimini ◽

Alessandro Gaetano ◽

Alessandra Pagani

Keyword(s):

Earnings Management ◽

Fiscal Year ◽

Investment Strategies ◽

Capital Assets ◽

Italian Market ◽

D Investment ◽

Firm Evidence

In this paper, we investigate the relation between the different accounting treatments of R&D expenditures and the risk of the entity in order to identify under which treatment insiders are more likely to carry out earnings management. By analysing the R&D investment strategies of a sample of 137 listed Italian entities that complied with the requirements of IAS 38 during fiscal year 2009, following Lantz and Sahut (2005), we calculate several indexes that show the preferences of insiders to account R&D expenditures as costs or capital assets, and we study the relation of such preferences with the risk of the entity, which we measure with the unlevered beta. We hypothesize that the entities, which considered the R&D investments as costs, are the riskiest ones due to the higher probability that insiders carried out earnings management. Our results confirm such hypothesis. This paper could have implications for academics and standard setters that could learn that behind accounting discretion, insiders could opportunistically behave against outsiders.

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