We document the existence of a strategy designed to circumvent limits to arbitrage. Faced with short-sale constraints and noise trader risk, small arbitrageurs publicly reveal their information to induce the target's shareholders ("the longs") to sell, thereby accelerating price discovery. Using data for 124 short-sale campaigns in the United States between 2006 and 2011, we show that investors respond strongly to the information, with spikes in SEC filing views, volatility, order imbalances, realized spreads, turnover, and selling by the longs. Share prices fall by an aggregate $ 14.8 billion. Our findings imply that even extreme short-sale constraints need not constrain arbitrage.

Financial constraints are fundamental to empirical research in finance and economics. We propose two tests to evaluate how well measures of financial constraints actually capture constraints. We find that firms typically classified as constrained do not actually behave as if they were constrained: they have no trouble raising debt when their demand for debt increases exogenously and use the proceeds of equity issues to increase payouts to shareholders. Our evidence suggests that extant findings that have been attributed to constraints may instead reflect differences in the growth and financing policies of firms at different stages of their life cycles.

We document the existence of a strategy designed to circumvent limits to arbitrage. Faced with short-sale constraints and noise trader risk, small arbitrageurs publicly reveal their information to induce the target’s shareholders (“the longs”) to sell, thereby accelerating price discovery. Using data for 124 short-sale campaigns in the United States between 2006 and 2011, we show that investors respond strongly to the information, with spikes in SEC filing views, volatility, order imbalances, realized spreads, turnover, and selling by the longs. Share prices fall by an aggregate $14.8 billion. Our findings imply that even extreme short-sale constraints need not constrain arbitrage.

Financial constraints are fundamental to empirical research in finance and economics. We propose two tests to evaluate how well measures of financial constraints actually capture constraints. We find that firms typically classified as constrained do not actually behave as if they were constrained: they have no trouble raising debt when their demand for debt increases exogenously and use the proceeds of equity issues to increase payouts to shareholders. Our evidence suggests that extant findings that have been attributed to constraints may instead reflect differences in the growth and financing policies of firms at different stages of their life cycles.