The return premium associated with the Amihud (2002) measure is generally considered a liquidity premium that compensates for price impact. We find that the pricing of the Amihud measure is not attributable to the construction of the return-to-volume ratio intended to capture price impact, but is driven by the trading volume component. Additionally, the high-frequency price impact and spread benchmarks are priced only in January and do not explain the pricing of the trading volume component of the Amihud measure. Additional analyses suggest that the volume effect on stock return is likely caused by mispricing, not by compensation for illiquidity. Received September 20, 2014; editorial decision April 16, 2017 by Editor Andrew Karolyi.

The impact of liquidity-motivated institutional trading on firms’ real decisions is not confined to periods of financial crisis. Firms subject to mutual fund flow-driven selling pressure reduce share issuance and investment, whereas firms experiencing buying pressure do not increase investment, although they issue more equity. Firms under extreme selling pressure cut quarterly investment by 0.075 percentage points of total assets, which is 4.3% of the average quarterly investment in our sample. We also find evidence that the effect is not attributed to managerial learning or catering incentives. Rather, flow-driven trading affects investment mainly through its impact on the financing cost.

We examine whether short sellers detect firms that misrepresent their financial statements, and whether their trading conveys external costs or benefits to other investors. Abnormal short interest increases steadily in the 19 months before the misrepresentation is publicly revealed, particularly when the misconduct is severe. Short selling is associated with a faster time‐to‐discovery, and it dampens the share price inflation that occurs when firms misstate their earnings. These results indicate that short sellers anticipate the eventual discovery and severity of financial misconduct. They also convey external benefits, helping to uncover misconduct and keeping prices closer to fundamental values.

The literature documents heterogeneity in the delay of stock price reaction to systematic shocks, implying that asset risk depends on investment horizon. We study the pricing of risk factors across investment horizons. Value (liquidity) risk is priced over intermediate (short) horizons. Conditioning horizon-factor exposures on firm characteristics indicates that characteristics, with the exception of momentum, are not priced beyond their contribution to systematic risk. Long-horizon institutional investors overweight assets with high intermediate-horizon exposures to value risk and high short-horizon exposures to liquidity risk. The results highlight the importance of investment horizon in determining risk premia.