The second moments matter: The response of bank lending behavior to macroeconomic uncertainty

In this paper we investigate whether macroeconomic uncertainty could distort allocation of loanable funds. To provide a road--map for our empirical investigation, we present a simple framework which demonstrates that an increase in macroeconomic uncertainty will lead to more homogeneous behavior among banks. We test this prediction on a comprehensive U.S. commercial bank data set, and find that as macroeconomic uncertainty increases the cross--sectional dispersion of banks' loan--to--asset ratios narrows, supporting our basic hypothesis. Our results are broadly similar across total loans and three major categories of bank loans, and robust to the inclusion of macroeconomic factors