Corporate pledgeable asset ownership and stock price crash risk

We investigate how a firm’s corporate pledgeable asset ownership (CPAO) affects the risk of future stock price crashes. Using pledgeable asset ownership and crash risk data for a large sample of U.S. firms, we provide novel empirical evidence that a firm’s risk of a future stock price crash decreases with an increase in its pledgeable assets. Our main findings are valid after conducting various robustness tests. Further channel tests reveal that firms with pledgeable assets increase their collateral value, thereby enhancing corporate transparency and limiting bad news hoarding, resulting in lower stock price crash risk. Overall, the results show that having more pledgeable assets enables easier access to external financing, making it less likely that managers will hoard bad news.