Exploiting the staggered adoption of U.S. state-level labor protection laws, we find that household mortgage debt increases following the passage of these laws. Our findings are consistent with theories predicting that better employment protection reduces households’ layoff risk, making lenders less concerned about borrowers’ ability to repay their debts and more inclined to offer them mortgage loans. Supporting this channel, we find that the loan approval rate increases following the adoption of labor protection laws and that the effect of the laws’ adoption on mortgage debt is concentrated in old households.

We propose that firms use stock splits as a means of attracting attention and inducing information production to correct price distortion caused by investors’ 52-week high anchoring bias. Our analysis shows that firms are more likely to split stocks when their prices are near 52-week highs, especially if they are highly profitable and undervalued. After splits, undervaluation gradually disappears. Moreover, these splits are associated with a slower market reaction and a more positive post-split drift, consistent with the notion that investors’ anchoring bias hinders price adjustment, leading to a gradual price correction. In addition, the likelihood of such splits increases with CEO wealth-performance sensitivity, and investment-price sensitivity increases following splits. Our evidence suggests that firms utilize stock splits to correct mispricing induced by investors’ 52-week high anchoring bias.