Uncertainty in banking regulation may impose widespread economic costs by increasing financial constraints on credit availability. Four years of Dodd‐Frank uncertainty over undecided risk weightings increased regulatory uncertainty for smaller banks, restricting “vanilla” interest rate hedging activities. This paper uses newly reported mortgage banking data as an identification strategy and finds that when costs of uncertainty are removed, small banks hedge 97%–120% more interest rate risk while mortgage securitization income increases by 65.2% compared to large banks. These findings support the need for tailored regulations that consider the higher costs of regulatory uncertainty for smaller banks.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.