Using a new daily dataset for all stocks traded on the New York Stock Exchange between 1905 and 1910, we study the impact of information asymmetry during the liquidity freeze and market run of October 1907 - one of the most severe financial crises of the 20th century. We estimate that the market...

We study the impact of the 1918 Spanish Flu on U.S. stock returns. We use a new weekly hand collected sample of 136 firms that traded on the NYSE and new mortality data to assess the impact of four waves of the flu on stock returns. We find that the second and fourth waves of the pandemic...

In light of the recent state of global financial markets, the practice of short selling has come under increasing scrutiny. While financial institutions argue that short selling is a necessary mechanism for price discovery and contributes significantly to market liquidity, regulators view it as...

Russia and Germany both industrialized later than England and the United States, and both countries retained authoritarian autocracies until World War I. But the two countries diverged in their regulation of industrial corporations during the mid-19th century, with Russia retaining strict...

We investigate the liquidity effects of the short sale bans enacted by six European countries in March 2020 in response to the declining market brought about by the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. Comparing stocks subjected to these bans to those in other European countries that did not...

In theory, banning short selling stabilizes stock prices but undermines pricing efficiency and has ambiguous impacts on market liquidity. Empirical studies find mixed and conflicting results. This paper leverages cross-country policy variation during the 2020 Covid crisis to assess differential...

We study the impact of the 1918 Spanish Flu on U.S. stock prices. Using a new weekly hand collected sample of 136 firms that traded on the NYSE, we examine the impact of the four waves of the flu on stock returns using panel regressions. The second and fourth wave of the pandemic significantly...

In theory, banning short selling stabilizes stock prices but undermines pricing efficiency and has ambiguous impacts on market liquidity. Empirical studies find mixed and conflicting results. This paper leverages cross-country policy variation during the 2020 Covid crisis to assess differential...