Is Informed Short Selling Concentrated in Family Firms? Evidence from a Reinvestigation

UIC’s Ferhat Akbas Publishes Research Challenging Short-Selling Assumptions

Ferhat Akbas smiling outdoors on a tree-lined residential street, wearing a cyan-and-white plaid collared shirt.

Recently accepted for publication in the Journal of Finance, new research by UIC Business faculty member Ferhat Akbas overturns a long-standing finding in the literature that family firms provide an informational advantage to short sellers. Instead, the study shows that short sellers are broadly informed across firms and that family firms are not uniquely vulnerable to informed short-selling activity.