The interplay between accounting quality and credit default risk for banks

Abstract

I explored the relationship between accounting quality and credit default risk for banks in the Eurozone. I set a model of banks in Orbis from 2015 to 2023. I aimed to broaden the literature on the banking sector since it has been largely neglected because of its particular balance sheet and financial measures. In agreement with previous findings, the Wilcoxon test revealed that the IFRS 9 mandatory adoption decreases the credit default risk for banks in the Eurozone. The results are accurate after robustness checks However, this study is limited to the Eurozone. Further, since IFRS was often adopted along with concurrent institutional reforms, it is difficult to identify the real effects of IFRS. To my knowledge, it is the first study that analyzes the relationship between accounting quality and credit default risk for banks from an accounting perspective in the Eurozone since previous scholars focused on capital-market impacts. This study contributes to developing a promising line of research in accounting and finance. Further, another implication would be to incentivize policymakers to focus on the improvement of institutional settings rather than the harmonization of accounting standards.