The Journal of Finance

The Journal of Finance publishes leading research across all the major fields of finance. It is one of the most widely cited journals in academic finance, and in all of economics. Each of the six issues per year reaches over 8,000 academics, finance professionals, libraries, and government and financial institutions around the world. The journal is the official publication of The American Finance Association, the premier academic organization devoted to the study and promotion of knowledge about financial economics.

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Shorting in Speculative Markets

Published: 01/22/2020   |   DOI: 10.1111/jofi.12871

MARCEL NUTZ, JOSÉ A. SCHEINKMAN

In models of trading with heterogeneous beliefs following Harrison‐Kreps, short selling is prohibited and agents face constant marginal costs‐of‐carry. The resale option guarantees that prices exceed buy‐and‐hold prices and the difference is identified as a bubble. We propose a model where risk‐neutral agents face asymmetric increasing marginal costs on long and short positions. Here, agents also value an option to delay, and a Hamilton‐Jacobi‐Bellman equation quantifies the influence of costs on prices. An unexpected decrease in shorting costs may deflate a bubble, linking financial innovations that facilitated shorting of mortgage‐backed securities to the collapse of prices.