This paper studies the effect of book versus fair value accounting on a bank's (re)investment behavior, risk of default, investment value, and the need for regulation. Adopting the wide--spread view that fair value accounting reduces the degree of asymmetric information, it shows that fair value accounting increases liquidity. Consequently, it intensifies risk shifting and, therefore, increases the need for regulation and the risk of default. For highly leveraged institutions the increased risk shifting under fair value accounting outweighs an underinvestment of book value accounting and ultimately reduces welfare.
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Paper provided by Departmental Working Papers in its series Papers with number
024.
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Andrea Enria & Lorenzo Cappiello & Frank Dierick & Sergio Grittini & Andrew Haralambous & Angela Maddaloni & Philippe Molitor & Fatima Pires & Paolo Poloni, 2004.
"Fair value accounting and financial stability,"
Occasional Paper Series
13, European Central Bank.
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