We empirically investigate how short selling affects product market performance. We find that higher short sales of stocks lead to declines in firms' market shares. The effects are stronger in larger firms, concentrated industries, and industries where firms compete in strategic substitutes....

We empirically investigate how short selling affects product market performance via a managerial monitoring channel. Using both historical data and the Reg SHO, we find that higher short interest leads to lower market shares of large firms. Our Reg SHO results are also stronger in concentrated...

Stock return volatility during the Great Depression has been labeled a “volatility puzzle” because the standard deviation of stock returns was two to three times higher than any other period in American history (Officer, 1973; Wilson, Sylla, and Jones; 1990). We investigate the “volatility...

We document two puzzling facts during the 1918–19 influenza outbreak. First, we find no significant differences among US life insurers' profitability before or after 1918. Second, there are fewer insurers in distress after the outbreak. We argue that an increase in insurance demand offset...

We uncover a tone transmission channel of monetary policy wherein the linguistic tone of press releases by the Fed shapes the linguistic tone of macro-related dialogues in corporate conference calls occurring days after such releases. Applying machine-learning techniques to a granular dataset of...

We investigate the role of forward-looking financial factors in propagating the Great Depression, given that much of the existing literature employs coincident or lagging indicators such as failed bank deposits and bank failures. We find that a new hand-collected bank stock index is better at...

No. We document two empirical facts for the U.S. life insurance sector during the 1918–19 Influenza pandemic. First, we find no significant differences among U.S. insurers’ profitability after 1918. Second, there were fewer insurers in distress after the pandemic outbreak. Using synthetic...

Following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Federal Reserve (Fed) and Central Banks around the world multilaterally conducted a mix of unconventional monetary policies. We evaluate the effects of these recent interventions vis-a-vis earlier episodes of Quantitative Easing (QE)...

Housing is a crucial channel through which migration affects the local economy and wealth distribution. However, most of what we know about the effects of migration on housing is from studies focused on the inflows of immigrants. This paper quantifies the impact of out-migration on local housing...