Ryan S. Voges

We examine prices and daily short selling activity around reverse stock splits using a difference-in-difference identification strategy. The results show negative returns for treatment stocks, relative to control stocks, around reverse splits. Additionally, short selling increases for treatment stocks vis-`a-vis control stocks in the days after the reverse split announcements, but not before. Moreover, short selling on reverse split announcement and effective dates does not appear to contain more information about future negative returns than usual. Together, the results indicate that reverse stock splits attract short sellers’ attention, but that they are no more informed around these events than normal.

Alternative financial services (AFS), such as payday lending, offer high-cost credit to underserved consumers, but their impact on consumers remains widely debated. Using data from over 9.4 million auto loan applicants, we examine how state usury laws affect AFS usage and consumer financial health. Although these laws reduce storefront and online AFS usage, they do not reduce AFS applications, suggesting persistent demand. These usury limits also lower credit scores, especially for high-demand borrowers who are more reliant on AFS. Our findings highlight the importance of evaluating the heterogeneous responses of consumers when assessing the effects of AFS regulations.

This paper examines how tap-to-pay (TTP) adoption affects consumer spending using proprietary item-level transaction data from U.S. convenience stores. Exploiting staggered store rollouts and employing both difference-in-differences and instrumental variable designs, I show that TTP raises monthly consumer spending primarily by increasing transaction frequency, while average transaction size at the consumer-month level remains stable. At the transaction level, however, TTP purchases are larger and contain more items. The effects are concentrated in beverages, tobacco, and lottery products, consistent with theories of payment salience and self-control. These findings highlight how interface-level fintech innovations alter consumer behavior.