The Basel III Accord tightens capital adequacy requirements for banks by increasing the minimum Tier 1 regulatory capital threshold from 4 to 6 percent. It also emphasizes the need to improve timeliness of loan loss provisions. Using a sample of European banks, we examine the impact of this regulation on banks’ discretionary loan loss provisioning behavior. Underscoring banks’ increased incentives to report higher capital ratios, we observe a post-Basel III increase in banks’ use of discretionary loan loss provisions (DLLPs) for capital management purposes and a corresponding reduction in the use of these provisions for income smoothing purposes. Moreover, we find that the timeliness of loan loss provisions has improved following Basel III. We also find that the post-Basel III increase in capital management behavior is greater for banks that do not face conflicting incentives when using DLLPs to improve Tier 1 versus total capital ratio. In contrast, the improvement in loan loss provisioning timeliness is greater for banks that are less likely to engage in capital management due to these conflicting incentives. Our findings suggest that Basel III has significantly altered banks’ discretionary loan loss provisioning behavior.

《巴塞尔协议三》通过将最低一级监管资本门槛从4％提高到6％，收紧了对银行的资本充足要求。它还强调需要改善贷款损失准备金的及时性。我们使用欧洲银行的样本，研究了该法规对银行的全权委托贷款损失准备行为的影响。强调银行增加报告更高资本比率的动机，我们观察到巴塞尔协议III后银行用于资本管理目的的酌处贷款损失准备金（DLLPs）的使用增加，并且相应地减少了将这些准备金用于收入平滑的目的。此外，我们发现，随着《巴塞尔协议III》的实施，贷款损失准备金的及时性有所改善。我们还发现，对于在使用DLLP来改善方法1与总资本比率时不会面临相互矛盾的激励的银行而言，巴塞尔协议III之后资本管理行为的增长更大。相比之下，由于这些激励措施相互冲突而不太可能从事资本管理的银行，贷款损失准备金及时性的改善更大。我们的发现表明，《巴塞尔协议三》极大地改变了银行的可自由支配的贷款损失准备金行为。