Resolving “Too Big to Fail”

Using a synthetic control research design, we find that living will regulation increases a bank’s annual cost of capital by 22 bps, or 10% of total funding costs. This effect is stronger in banks measured as systemically important before the regulation’s announcement. We interpret our findings as a reduction in Too-Big-to-Fail subsidies. The effect size is large: multiplying our bank-specific point estimates by funding size implies a subsidy reduction of $42B annually. The impact on equity drives the main effect. The impact on deposits is statistically indistinguishable from zero, passing the placebo test for our empirical strategy.