Short Selling Pressure, Stock Price Behavior, and Management Forecast Precision: Evidence from a Natural Experiment
利用美国SHO法规这一自然实验，研究发现卖空压力增加会促使管理层降低坏消息预测的精度，并降低坏消息年报的可读性，表明维持股价是管理层策略性披露的重要考量。
ABSTRACT 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 sensitivity to bad news by reducing the precision of bad news forecasts. This finding on management forecasts appears to be generalizable to other corporate disclosures. In particular, we find that, in response to increased short selling pressure, managers also reduce the readability (or increase the fuzziness) of bad news annual reports. Overall, our results suggest that maintaining the current level of stock prices is an important consideration in managers’ strategic disclosure decisions.