This paper explores the spillover effects of Hurricane Katrina on corporate bonds through the liquidations of bond holdings by property and reinsurance companies exposed to the Katrina shock. We find that the sales of exposed property and reinsurance companies create a persistent negative price...

The security lending market allows institutional investors, such as insurance companies, to lend out their holding assets in exchange for cash collateral, an important but understudied source of funding to conduct off-balance sheet transactions. Since these lenders are also primary investors of...

We study how the relative availability of bond and bank financing supply affects the firm's ability to borrow and to use its leverage to buffer shocks. We define a measure that proxies for the regional borrowing inflexibility in the availability of bank and bond financing: “debt...

We investigate how short sellers strategically exploit the liquidity generated by the arrival of ambiguous information – i.e. information likely to cause disagreement in interpretation. Using a sample of newspaper articles, media newswires, and press releases, we construct a measure of...

We investigate whether short sellers are subject to the disposition effect using a novel dataset that allows to identify the weekly closing of short positions. Consistent with the disposition effect, the closing of short sale positions is strongly related to a proxy of Shortsale Capital Gains...

We study how debt market frictions that constrain the ability of firms to buffer a tightening in bank credit supply affect corporate yield spreads. We focus on the frictions driven by the regional availability of debt financing. We provide evidence of a strong regional segmentation in the debt...

We study empirically whether short selling deters the incorporation of positive information. We find a sizeable reduction of positive information impounding before earnings announcements for stocks more exposed to short selling. The price pressure from short selling cannot explain this effect....

We examine the effect of the bond capital supply uncertainty of institutional investors (e.g., mutual bond funds and insurance companies) on the leverage of the firm using a novel dataset. Our main finding is that the supply uncertainty of the firm's bond investor base — measured as (i) the...