How Informative Are Value-at-Risk Disclosures?
研究美国商业银行披露的交易风险价值（VAR）能否预测其交易收入的波动性，发现VAR披露对分析师和投资者评估银行交易组合风险具有信息价值。
Value at Risk (VAR), a measure of the dollar amount of potential loss from adverse market moves, has become a standard benchmark for measuring financial risk. Spurred by regulators and competitive pressures, more institutions are reporting VAR numbers in annual and quarterly financial reports. To provide preliminary evidence on the informativeness of these new disclosures, I investigate the relation between the trading VAR disclosed by a small sample of U.S. commercial banks and the subsequent variability of their trading revenues. The empirical results suggest that VAR disclosures are informative in that they predict the variability of trading revenues. Thus, analysts and investors can use VAR disclosures to compare the risk profiles of banks' trading portfolios.