About

Stephen G. Ryan is the Vincent C. Ross Professor of Accounting at New York University Stern School of Business. He has been a faculty member at Stern since 1990 and teaches courses including Principles of Financial Accounting, Accounting for Financial Instruments, Analysis of Financial Institutions, and a doctoral seminar on banking and debt contracting. His primary research areas include accounting measurement, accounting-based valuation and risk assessment, and financial reporting by financial institutions and for financial instruments. Professor Ryan has published extensively in leading journals such as The Accounting Review, Journal of Accounting and Economics, Journal of Accounting Research, Management Science, and the Review of Accounting Studies. He is also the author of the book 'Financial Instruments and Institutions: Accounting and Disclosure Rules.' With a background that includes work at Yale School of Organization and Management and Bain and Company, he has served on various influential bodies including the Financial Accounting Standards Advisory Council, the Financial Accounting Standards Board’s advisory groups, and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Financial Advisory Roundtable. His academic credentials include a Ph.D. in business from Stanford University and a B.A. in Economics/Philosophy from Dartmouth College.

Research topics

• Economics
• Finance
• Business
• Computer Science
• Accounting
• Financial system
• Ecology
• Statistics
• Operations management
• Natural resource economics
• Econometrics
• Geography
• Actuarial science
• Engineering
• Mathematics

Selected publications

• Discussion of “real effects of lagged guidance from prudential regulators on CECL”

  Journal of Accounting and Economics · 2025-07-03

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Banks’ Motivations for Designating Securities as Held to Maturity

  The Accounting Review · 2025-04-18 · 5 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  ABSTRACT We provide evidence that banks classify fixed-rate debt investment securities as held to maturity (HTM) rather than as available for sale (AFS) when HTM classification provides preferred financial accounting and regulatory capital treatments, not because they have a distinct economically motivated intent and ability to hold the securities to maturity. Specifically, we document predictably divergent security classifications by three categories of banks that differ in whether the regulatory accumulated other comprehensive income (AOCI) filter, which removes AOCI from Tier 1 capital, applies in four subperiods of our 2012–2022 sample period. The boundaries of the subperiods reflect changes in the AOCI filter’s applicability in 2014 and 2019 and the sharp rise in interest rates beginning in late 2021. We further find that the bank categories differ in the interest rate risk of their AFS securities and the extents to which they economically hedge that risk using derivatives and uninsured deposits. JEL Classifications: G21; G28; M41; M48.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Attribution Locus and the Timeliness of Long-lived Asset Write-downs

  ArXiv.org · 2025-09-13

  preprintOpen accessSenior author

  We examine the relative timeliness with which write-downs of long-lived assets incorporate adverse macroeconomic and industry outcomes versus adverse firm-specific outcomes. We posit that users of financial reports are more likely to attribute adverse firm-specific outcomes to suboptimal managerial actions, which provide managers with more incentive to delay write downs. We provide evidence that, controlling for other incentives to manage earnings, firms record write-downs in the current year that are driven by adverse macroeconomic and industry outcomes during both the current year and the next year, but they record write-downs driven by adverse firm-specific outcomes only in the current year.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Bank Regulation/Supervision and Bank Auditing

  European Accounting Review · 2024-08-05 · 7 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  We investigate how bank regulation and supervision influence banks' internal control quality, banks' financial statement reliability, and the effort expended by bank auditors. Using material weaknesses in internal controls disclosed under Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act as the proxy for internal control quality, we find that banks exhibit significantly higher internal control quality than comparable nonbank financial firms. Using restatements of financial statements as the proxy for financial statement reliability, we find that banks' financial reports are more reliable than those of comparable nonbanks. Using audit fees as the proxy for audit effort, we find that auditors expend less effort in audits of banks than in audits of comparable nonbanks. Collectively, our findings suggest that the combination of bank audits and banking regulation/supervision significantly improves banks' internal control quality and financial statement reliability, despite auditors expending less effort in bank audits compared to nonbanks.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Damper on the Party: The Effect of Accounting Conservatism on Life Insurers' Risk Acceptance Leading up to the Financial Crisis

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• The Effect of the Current Expected Credit Loss Approach on Banks’ Lending during Stress Periods: Evidence from the COVID-19 Recession

  The Accounting Review · 2024-09-25 · 18 citations

  article

  ABSTRACT In the wake of the financial crisis, policymakers expressed the concern that the incurred loss model delays loan loss recognition to economic stress periods and thereby exacerbates banks’ lending contraction during these periods. Addressing this concern, the FASB issued Accounting Standards Update 2016-13, which requires large public banks to accrue for loan losses using the current expected credit loss (CECL) approach starting in January 2020. We hypothesize and find that banks that adopted CECL prior to the COVID-19 pandemic increased loan loss provisions and reduced loan growth during the accompanying recession more than other banks. The lending contraction is stronger for adopting banks with low regulatory capital and low loan impairment and is primarily driven by commercial loans. Lastly, we find that counties in which CECL-adopting banks have higher market share experience larger increases in unemployment rates during the recession and slower subsequent recoveries. Data Availability: Data are available from the public sources cited in the text. JEL Classifications: E32; G21; G28; M41; M48.

  PublisherDOI

• Impact of the Financial Crisis and Banks’ Capital Adequacy on their Approval of Low- versus High-Risk Mortgages

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• SVB and Beyond: The Banking Stress of 2023

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2023 · 48 citations

  • Business
  • Financial system
  • Finance
  PublisherDOI

• Risk-Based Construction Inspection: Conduct of Research Report

  Transportation Research Board eBooks · 2023-06-09 · 1 citations

  book
  PublisherDOI

• Strategic Upward Striving Toward $100 Million Revenue: Setting Goals to Attract External Attention

  Organization Science · 2023-06-30 · 8 citations

  articleSenior author

  We provide evidence that in certain contexts, firms set upward-striving goals and that this upward striving yields significant performance and visibility benefits. We develop a model of variable attention in which, as firms’ performance levels approach cognitively salient round numbers, managers strategically shift their focus from easier-to-reach goals based on historical and social reference points to more challenging goals that provide external visibility and capital market benefits. As one specific yet important instance of an upward shift in attention, we document a significant increase in revenue growth rates as firms’ annual revenue approaches $100 million. Firms achieving this goal obtain discontinuous increases in analyst and media coverage, investment by new institutional investors, and executive compensation. We find no evidence of decreased investment efficiency or profitability, suggesting that managers typically build slack into their goal levels. Our theory extends to goals based on other salient round numbers, such as revenue of $10 million, $500 million, and $1 billion. This study recasts behavioral theory of firm research in an open systems perspective, highlighting the externally directed aspects of firm goal setting. Supplemental Material: The online appendices are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2021.15148 .

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Al Ghosh

  18 shared

• Henry Jarva

  Hanken School of Economics

  18 shared

• Volker Hilt

  Nokia (Germany)

  15 shared

• Viral V. Acharya

  National Bureau of Economic Research

  15 shared

• Timothy C. Beers

  15 shared

• Robert H. Herz

  Columbia University

  14 shared

• Krishna G. Palepu

  14 shared

• James M. Wahlen

  Indiana University Bloomington

  12 shared

Awards & honors

• Best Paper Prize, American Accounting Association Financial…
• Emerald Management Reviews Citation of Excellence for one of…
• Co-winner Best Paper Prize, Accounting Horizons (2006)
• Co-winner Best Paper Prize, Accounting Horizons (2004)