We study the behavior of short sellers as informed market participants and examine potential sources of their information. Using a newly available dataset with high-frequency short sales data, we find evidence of significant increases in short sales immediately prior to large insider sales, but...

When short selling is costly, owners of an asset have greater incentive to become informed than nonowners because trading on negative information is easier for them. Thus, information acquisition concentrates among investors owning the asset. A short selling ban restricts selling to only the...

We examine short selling of equity exchange traded funds (ETFs) using the 2008 short-sale ban. Contrasting the previously documented contractions in bearish strategies during the ban, we find a significant increase in short sales of the largest, most liquid ETF, the S&P 500 Spider. We offer...

Using a novel dataset of insider trading and short selling from the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, we investigate potential information leakage from insiders to short sellers, particularly in family-controlled firms. We document a significant increase in short selling volume before information on...

This paper examines the effects of the 2008 short-sale ban on exchange traded funds (ETFs). Short sales of banned stocks decreased significantly during the ban period. However, we demonstrate that a portion of that decrease was reabsorbed by financial-sector ETFs and the biggest and most liquid...

Using a natural experiment (Regulation SHO), we show that short selling pressure and consequent stock price behavior have a causal effect on managers' voluntary disclosure choices. Specifically, we find that managers respond to a positive exogenous shock to short selling pressure and price...

​Tracing the SEC ban on the short selling of financial stocks in September 2008, this paper investigates whether such selling activity before the 2008 short ban reflected financial companies' risk exposures in the subprime crisis. The evidence suggests that short sellers sold short stocks that...

Naked short selling and purposeful fails-to-deliver have been identified in the popular press and by the SEC as contributing factors to the stock market decline in 2008. We investigate the market impact of the announcement that fails-to-deliver have occurred for a sample of real estate...

We examine the causal effect of short-selling on a firm's annual report readability using Regulation SHO, which relaxes short-sale constraints for a random sample of pilot stocks. Pilot firms' annual report readability decreases during the experiment period. This short-selling effect on 10-K...

We investigate the impact of short selling and margin trading on measures of price efficiency, characteristics of stock returns distributions, and price clustering in the Chinese equity market. Short selling and margin trading was permitted on selected stocks from March 31, 2010 and was...