Insider Sales under the Threat of Short Sellers: New Hypothesis and New Tests
利用美国SHO规则作为准实验，发现卖空威胁会减少机会主义内部人卖出量但提高其单笔盈利，并在诉讼风险高、媒体关注多及高管持股多的公司中更显著，在中国和香港市场也得到验证。
ABSTRACT Using the Regulation SHO program as a quasi-experiment, we document that the threat of short selling has a negative effect on the volume of opportunistic insider selling and a positive effect on its profitability for each transaction. These effects are stronger among firms with higher litigation risk, greater media coverage, and executives who have more of their firms' stock-related holdings. We further find robust evidence when we extend the analyses to short selling deregulations in the Chinese and Hong Kong stock exchanges. Overall, our findings suggest that short sellers play a disciplinary role in opportunistic insider selling. Data Availability: Data are available from the public sources cited in the text. JEL Classifications: D8; D53; G14; G18.