In this paper, we investigate whether and how short selling threat affects real activity manipulation. Using a regulatory experiment (Regulation SHO) that removes short selling restrictions on randomly selected pilot firms, we find that real activity manipulation is significantly reduced for pilot firms in response to increased short selling threat during the experiment period. The reduction effect is stronger for pilot firms with a transparent financial reporting strategy, a high level of negative financial reporting sentiment, and bad news. Our finding confirms short sellers' monitoring effect on opportunistic behavior, even for real activity manipulation that is difficult to detect.

在本文中，我们研究了卖空威胁是否以及如何影响真实活动操纵。使用消除对随机选择的试点公司的卖空限制的监管实验（Regulation SHO），我们发现在实验期间，随着试点公司对卖空威胁的增加，实际活动的操纵被大大减少了。对于具有透明财务报告策略，较高水平的负面财务报告情绪和坏消息的试点公司而言，减少效果更强。我们的发现证实了卖空者对机会主义行为的监控效果，即使对于难以发现的真实活动操纵也是如此。