Short selling and readability in financial disclosures: A controlled experiment
利用监管SHO实验，发现放松卖空限制导致试点公司年报可读性显著下降，尤其对投资者关注度低和增长前景差的公司影响更大，表明卖空压力会降低财务透明度。
Abstract 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 produce significantly less readable annual reports than nonpilot firms during the experiment period. Our results are more pronounced for firms that receive less investor attention and those with poorer growth prospects. Furthermore, pilot firms increase the use of uncertainty words in annual reports during the experiment period. Our results suggest that firms produce less transparent financial disclosures that are more costly for investors to comprehend when short‐sale constraints are less rigorous.