This dissertation consists of three essays. The first essay, Short Sales in the NYSE Batch Open and NASDAQ Opening Cross, examines opening-trade short volume's relation to short volume for the rest of the trading day and to overnight, previous-day, and same-day price changes. We find that short volume in the batch open and opening cross increases with short volume for the rest of the day, with previous-day, open-to-close price changes, and with overnight price changes for S & P 500 stocks. Batch-open short volume increases with overnight price changes, and it increases (does not decrease) for firms making positive (negative) overnight earnings announcements. Opening-cross short volume increases with close-to-close, previous-day price changes and is negatively related to same-day price changes. Our second essay, Short Sales around Open-Market Repurchase Announcements, studies short selling of a firm's stock during the five days after it announces an open-market repurchase. We conclude that a firm may be able to mislead normally-informed investors about its quality by announcing an open-market repurchase. Next, we conclude that open-market repurchase size does not possess positive signaling attributes. Lastly, we conclude that short sellers do not predict the repurchasing behavior of firms announcing an open-market repurchase. The third essay, Profit Efficiency and Big Bank Presence in Rural Markets, studies the effect of big-bank presence on the profitability of rural one-market banks. We find that a small rural bank shows decreased profit efficiency and increased return on assets due to higher loan income when it competes with at least one big bank. If multiple big banks are competing with a small rural bank, the small bank shows a smaller decrease in profit efficiency and a smaller increase in return on assets due to a smaller increase in loan income than if it competes with one big bank. From these results, we conclude that big banks choose to remain in rural markets where they possess some degree of market power, enabling them to earn higher returns while operating less efficiently, but market power is restricted when more than one big bank is present in a rural market.