We argue that management sells assets when doing so provides the cheapest funds topursue its objectives rather than for operating efficiency reasons alone. This hypothesissuggests that (1) firms selling assets have high leverage and/or poor performance, (2)a successful asset sale is good news, and (3) the stock market discounts asset sale proceedsretained by the selling firm. In support of this hypothesis, we find that the typical firm inour sample performs poorly before the sale and that the average stock-price reaction toasset sales is positive only when the proceeds are paid out.