Publication Type
Working Paper
Version
publishedVersion
Publication Date
4-2017
Abstract
We study the trading behavior of short sellers in the presence of economic policy uncertainty (EPU). Daily short selling activity at either the aggregate level or the individual stock level is increasing in the EPU index (Baker, Bloom and Davis, 2016). EPU has great explanatory power for short trading. Cross-sectional tests show that the increase in short interest under high political uncertainty is from shorting stocks characterized by higher mispricing, greater policy sensitivity, higher illiquidity, greater volatility or analyst dispersion. Short sellers earn abnormal profits by trading on public information related to EPU.
Keywords
Short selling, economic policy uncertainty, political uncertainty, trading, risk, mispricing
Discipline
Economic Policy | Finance and Financial Management
Identifier
10.2139/ssrn.2948291
Publisher
SSRN
Citation
CAO, Xiaping; WANG, Yuchen; and ZHOU, Sili.
Short selling and economic policy uncertainty. (2017).
Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/lkcsb_research/5233
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Additional URL
https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2948291