Information Frictions in Uncertain Regulatory Environments: Evidence from U.S. Commercial Banks
研究发现，银行与监管机构之间的地理距离越大，银行面临的行政成本越高（每增加一小时车程成本上升20%），且这种成本差异不伴随合规水平下降，表明信息摩擦在监管标准不确定时降低了合规效率。
Abstract Information frictions between firms and regulators are typically seen as a means by which firms evade enforcement. In contrast, we argue that information frictions between firms and regulators can reduce the efficiency of firms’ compliance efforts when the interpretation of regulatory standards is uncertain. We exploit plausibly exogenous variation in distance between firms and their regulators to demonstrate this for a panel of community banks in the US. We find that banks located at greater distance from regulatory field offices face significantly higher administrative costs, at a rate of 20% of administrative costs per hour of travel time. These differences do not come with reduced compliance, are not driven by endogenous regulator choice, and are stable over time. Further, the costs borne by distant firms are negatively related to the scale of the jurisdiction in which they operate, suggesting that information spillovers between firms limit uncertainty about regulatory expectations.