Knowledge that Transforms

We use a regulatory experiment (Regulation SHO) that relaxes short-selling constraints on a random sample of U.S. stocks to test whether capital market frictions have an effect on stock prices and corporate decisions. We find that an increase in short-selling activity causes prices to fall, and that small firms react to these lower prices by reducing equity issues and investment. These results not only provide evidence that short-selling constraints affect asset prices, but also confirm that short-selling activity has a causal impact on financing and investment decisions.

A regulator resolving a bank faces two audiences: depositors, who may run if they believe the regulator will not provide capital, and banks, which may take excess risk if they believe the regulator will provide capital. When the regulator's cost of injecting capital is private information, it manages expectations by using costly signals: (1) a regulator with a low cost of injecting capital may forbear on bad banks to signal toughness and reduce risk taking, and (2) a regulator with a high cost of injecting capital may bail out bad banks to increase confidence and prevent runs.

We analyze how increased access to financing affects firm total factor productivity (TFP) by exploiting a natural experiment following interstate banking deregulations that increased access to bank financing. We find that firms' TFP increases after their states implement these deregulations. Using a regression discontinuity approach based on the Small Business Administration's funding eligibility criteria, we show that TFP increases following the deregulations are significantly greater for financially constrained firms. Our results suggest that greater access to financing allows financially constrained firms to invest in productive projects that may otherwise not be taken up.

This paper uses a novel dataset of commodity-linked notes (CLNs) to examine the impact of the flows of financial investors on commodity futures prices. Investor flows into and out of CLNs are passed to and withdrawn from the futures markets via issuers' trades to hedge their CLN liabilities. The flows are not based on information about futures price movements but nonetheless cause increases and decreases in commodity futures prices when they are passed through to and withdrawn from the futures markets. These finding are consistent with the hypothesis that non-information-based financial investments have important impacts on commodity prices.

We estimate a dynamic model of the decision to close a troubled bank. Regulators trade off an aversion to closing banks against the risk that allowing a bank to continue will raise the eventual costs to the deposit insurance fund. Using a conditional choice probability approach, we estimate the costs associated with closing banks, both in direct costs to the insurance fund and in other costs perceived by regulators, either social or personal. We find that delayed closures were driven by a desire to defer costs, an aversion to closing the largest and smallest troubled banks, and political influence.