The impact of financial regulation on the stickiness of credit card lending rate: evidence from the USA

We examine the effect of the U.S. Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure (CARD) Act of 2009 on the credit card lending rate pass-through. Our findings show that the Act had no impact on the long-term relationship between the lending rate and funding costs. However, in the short-term, banks were quicker to raise rates in response to an increase in funding costs after the implementation of the CARD Act. Our study shows that financial regulations can have unintended consequences.