We examine the incentive of corporate bond fund managers to manipulate portfolio risk in response to competitive pressure. We find that bond funds engage in a reverse fund tournament in which laggard funds actively de-risk their portfolios, trading-off higher yields for more liquid and safer...

This paper investigates the microeconomic determinants of leverage decisions by asset managers. Investment funds (the "buy side") have significantly increased their share of global capital flows in recent years. Unconventional monetary policies in advanced economies have squeezed returns while...

Open-end mutual funds face redemptions by investors, but the sale of the underlying assets depends on the portfolio decision of asset managers. If asset managers use their cash holding as a buffer to meet redemptions, they can mitigate fire sales of the underlying asset. If they hoard cash in...

We develop a parsimonious model to study the effect of regulations aimed at reducing counterparty risk on the structure of over-the-counter securities markets. We find that such regulations promote entry of dealers, thus fostering competition and lowering spreads. Greater competition, however,...

The majority of financial trades take place in open and highly regulated markets. As an alternative venue, large asset managers sometimes offset the trades of affiliated funds in an internal market, without relying on external facilities or supervision. In this paper, we employ institutional...

Lending to emerging market economies (EMEs) through bond purchases has surged since 2009. What are the risks of a sudden stop? Bond mutual funds may curtail credit through two channels. The first is redemptions by ultimate investors. The second is additional discretionary sales by fund managers,...

We explore the link between firms' dollar bond borrowing and their FX-hedged funding opportunities, as reflected in a positive corporate basis (the relative cost of local to synthetic currency borrowing). Consistent with previous research, we first document that firms substitute domestic for...

The 30-year U.S. swap spreads have been negative since September 2008. We offer a novel explanation for this persistent anomaly. Through an illustrative model, we show that underfunded pension plans optimally use swaps for duration hedging. Combined with dealer banks' balance sheet constraints,...

We estimate variance risk premiums (VRPs) in the stock markets of major advanced economies (AEs) and emerging market economies (EMEs) over 2007-15 and decompose the VRP into variance-diffusive risk premium (DRP) and variance-jump risk premium (JRP). Daily VAR analysis reveals significant...

In emerging market economies, currency appreciation goes hand in hand with compressed sovereign bond spreads, even for local currency sovereign bonds. This yield compression comes from a reduction in the credit risk premium. Crucially, the relevant exchange rate involved in yield compression is...