Short sell bans are often imposed during a financial crisis as a desperate measure to stabilize financial markets. Yet, the impact of short sell bans on option pricing and hedging is not well studied, at least quantitatively, until very recently when Guo Zhu [(2017) Equal risk pricing under convex trading constraints, Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control 76, 136-151] and He Zhu [(2020) A revised option pricing formula with the underlying being banned from short selling, Quantitative Finance 20 (6), 935-948] formulated a new pricing framework with the underlying being either completely or partially banned from short selling. However, no empirical results were provided to substantiate the usefulness of the formulae, as well as to deepen our understanding on the effects of short sell bans. This paper provides a comprehensive empirical study on the effects of short sell bans to the standard option pricing theory by carrying out both cross-sectional and options time series model calibra