Short Sales Constraints and Financial Stability: Evidence from the Spanish 2011 Ban

This paper studies the main effects of the short sales ban implemented in August 2011 in the Spanish stock market along two dimensions: financial stability and market performance. Regarding the first, we show that short positions were a significant determinant of the probability of default of medium...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Arce, O. (Óscar)|||/items/99854674-2cad-4d59-b161-8237b3eb2c39, Mayordomo, S. (Sergio)|||/items/348a324d-e792-4490-9707-5739befc8375
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2012
País:España
Institución:Universidad de Navarra
Repositorio:Dadun. Depósito Académico Digital de la Universidad de Navarra
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:dadun.unav.edu:10171/43144
Acceso en línea:https://hdl.handle.net/10171/43144
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Materias Investigacion::Economía y Empresa
Short-sales constraints
Financial stability
Financial institutions
Credit default swap
Contagion
Descripción
Sumario:This paper studies the main effects of the short sales ban implemented in August 2011 in the Spanish stock market along two dimensions: financial stability and market performance. Regarding the first, we show that short positions were a significant determinant of the probability of default of medium-sized banks before the ban. We find that, by weakening the contagion effect coming from the sovereign risk, the ban helped stabilise the probability of default of medium-sized banks, an effect which is not significant in the case of the largest banks and non-financials. Nonetheless, the stabilising power of the ban came at the cost of a large decline in the relative liquidity, trading volumes and price information efficiency of medium-sized banks stocks.