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Working Paper
How Did CECL Affect Bank Lending?
Adoption of the current expected credit losses (CECL) methodology for loan loss provisioning significantly altered how banks recognize loan losses in their capital calculations. Because capital is a more costly funding source for banks, the accounting change affects banks' cost of funding loans. Using variation in the timing and effect of CECL implementation across firms and loan types, this paper finds that loan loss allowances have a similar causal effect on credit supply as capital requirements. Within our sample, the effect of CECL adoption on loan allowances reduced loan growth by ...
Working Paper
An Empirical Economic Assessment of the Costs and Benefits of Bank Capital in the US
We evaluate the economic costs and benefits for bank capital levels in the United States. The framework and analysis is similar to that found in previous studies though we tailor the analysis to the specific features and experience of the U.S. financial system and account for the impact of new financial regulations. The conceptual framework identifies the benefits of bank capital with a lower probability of financial crises, which result in decreased economic output. The costs of bank capital are identified with increases in banks cost of funding, which are passed along to borrowers and ...
Working Paper
CECL and the Credit Cycle
We find that that the Current Expected Credit Loss (CECL) standard would slightly dampen fluctuations in bank lending over the economic cycle. In particular, if the CECL standard had always been in place, we estimate that lending would have grown more slowly leading up to the financial crisis and more rapidly afterwards. We arrive at this conclusion by estimating historical allowances under CECL and modeling how the impact on accounting variables would have affected banks' lending and capital distributions. We consider a variety of approaches to address uncertainty regarding the management of ...
Working Paper
COVID-19 as a Stress Test: Assessing the Bank Regulatory Framework
The widespread economic damage caused by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic poses the first major test of the bank regulatory reforms put in place following the global financial crisis. This study assesses this framework, with an emphasis on capital and liquidity requirements. Leading up to the COVID-19 crisis, banks were well-capitalized and held ample liquid assets, reflecting in part heightened requirements. Capital requirements were comparable across major jurisdictions, despite differences in the implementation of the international Basel standards. The overall robust capital and liquidity ...
Discussion Paper
Mortgage Servicing Right Valuations Under Stress
Mortgage servicing right (MSR) valuations decrease when mortgage default and prepayment rates increase, as is generally the case when the economy enters into recession. To estimate how large these MSR valuation declines could be for the banking sector in a severe economic downturn, we project the potential increase in default and prepayment rates under the supervisory stress test models and scenarios for mortgages serviced by large banks.
Discussion Paper
New Accounting Framework Faces Its First Test: CECL During the Pandemic
On January 1, 2020, most large and mid-sized U.S. banks adopted Current Expected Credit Losses (CECL), a new accounting standard for estimating allowances. Allowance for credit losses is an estimate of the amount that a bank is unlikely to recover from a financial asset.
Journal Article
An Empirical Economic Assessment of the Costs and Benefits of Bank Capital in the United States
We evaluate the economic costs and benefits of bank capital in the United States. The analysis is similar to that found in previous studies, though we tailor it to the specific features and experience of the U.S. financial system. We also make adjustments to account for the impact of liquidity- and resolution-related regulations on the probability of a financial crisis. We find that the level of capital that maximizes the difference between total benefits and total costs ranges from just over 13 percent to 26 percent. This range reflects a high degree of uncertainty and latitude in specifying ...