Working Paper

The contribution of on-site examination ratings to an emprircal model of bank failures

Abstract: This paper investigates how well regulator examinations predict bank failures, and how best to incorporate examination information into an econometric model of time-to-failure. We estimate proportional hazard models with time-varying covariates and find that examiner ratings help explain the failure hazard. Both the overall rating of a bank's condition and management, i.e., the composite CAMELS rating, and ratings of specific components contain information. In addition, we find that the marginal \"effect\" of ratings is non-linear, in that the impact of a rating downgrade on the probability of failure is larger, the weaker a bank's initial rating.

Keywords: Bank failures; bank examinations;

Status: Published in Review of Accounting and Finance, November 2005, 4(4), pp. 110-34

Bibliographic Information

Provider: Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis

Part of Series: Working Papers

Publication Date: 1999

Number: 1999-023