Does capital market drive corporate investment efficiency? Evidence from equity lending supply
View/ Open
tsai_et_al_2021 (634.8Kb)
Download
Publication date
2021-08Keyword
Equity lending supplyShort selling threats
Corporate investment efficiency
Financial constraints
Rights
© 2021 Elsevier. Reproduced in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)Peer-Reviewed
YesOpen Access status
openAccess
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
The increased equity lending supply (ELS) in the equity loan market, available for short sellers to borrow, exposes a firm to greater short selling threats. Considering short sellers’ strong incentives to uncover firm-specific information and monitor managers, we hypothesize that short selling threats, proxied by ELS, enhance corporate investment efficiency. We find that ELS significantly reduces managerial tendencies to underinvest (overinvest) especially for firms prone to underinvest (overinvest). The effect of ELS on investment efficiency is stronger for firms with higher information asymmetry and weaker corporate governance, confirming short sellers’ role in mitigating information and agency costs. However, short selling risk weakens the effect of ELS. Our evidence is robust to endogeneity checks and suggests that corporate investment can be driven by a particular capital market condition: the amount of lendable shares in the equity loan market.Version
Accepted manuscriptCitation
Tsai H-J, Wu Y and Xu B (2021) Does capital market drive corporate investment efficiency? Evidence from equity lending supply. Journal of Corporate Finance. 69: 102042.Link to Version of Record
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcorpfin.2021.102042Type
Articleae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcorpfin.2021.102042