Effects of IFRS-13 on the relevance of fair value adjusted by credit risk: Evidence from Europe

Abstract

Accounting harmonization in Europe by International Financial Reporting Standard adoption is a recurrent object of study in the accounting literature. In this paper the consequences of the adoption of Standard-13 are analyzed. In particular, this research analyzes the effects on the implied volatility option (risk) for non-financial companies of three variables: financial leverage, own probability default (Debt Value Adjusted) and financial institutions credit risk (Credit Value Adjusted), before and after the adoption of the accounting standard on fair value. The empirical study focuses on member companies of the European Monetary Union zone to avoid other risk factors different to market risk (such as exchange rate or different risk free rate) and at the same time, easily identify the market portfolio (EUROSTOXX-50). To overcome the problems of endogeneity in the panel data, we use the technique System Generalized Method of Moments with instrumental variables to estimate the parameters. The results show that the leverage effect on excess risk does not change after adopting the Standard, however, its own and the financial institutions default probabilities become statistically significant. Furthermore, this novel methodology allows estimate industry asset betas and, in all cases the asset betas were lower than equity betas and, found an average debt beta of 0.4 for the sample period.