This paper examines banks’ disclosures and loss recognition in the 2007–2009 financial crisis and identifies several core issues for the link between accounting and financial stability. We show that, going into the financial crisis, banks’ disclosures about relevant risk exposures were relatively sparse. Such disclosures came later after major concerns about banks’ exposures had arisen in markets. The recognition of loan losses also was slow and delayed relative to prevailing market expectations. Among the possible explanations for this evidence, our analysis indicates that banks’ reporting incentives played a key role, which has important implications for bank supervision and the new expected loss model for loan accounting. We also provide evidence that shielding regulatory capital from accounting losses through prudential filters can dampen banks’ incentives for corrective actions. Overall, our analysis reveals several significant challenges if accounting and financial reporting are to contribute to financial stability.

本文研究了银行在 2007-2009 年金融危机中的披露和损失确认，并确定了会计与金融稳定之间联系的几个核心问题。我们表明，进入金融危机后，银行对相关风险敞口的披露相对较少。此类披露是在市场上出现对银行风险敞口的重大担忧之后发布的。与普遍的市场预期相比，贷款损失的确认也很缓慢和延迟。在对这一证据的可能解释中，我们的分析表明银行的报告激励发挥了关键作用，这对银行监管和贷款会计的新预期损失模型具有重要意义。我们还提供证据表明，通过审慎过滤器保护监管资本免受会计损失会抑制银行采取纠正措施的积极性。总体而言，我们的分析揭示了会计和财务报告要促进金融稳定的几个重大挑战。