Corporate bond mutual funds engage in liquidity transformation, raising concerns among academics and policymakers that large redemptions will lead to asset fire sales. We find little evidence, however, that bond fund redemptions drive fire sale price pressure after controlling for time-varying...

We examine "reaching for yield" in U.S. corporate bond mutual funds. We define reaching for yield as tilting portfolios toward bonds with yields higher than the benchmarks. We find that funds generate higher returns and attract more inflows when they reach for yield, especially in periods of...

We show that supply side effects arising from the bond holdings of open-end mutual funds affect corporate credit risk. In our model, funds exposed to flow-performance relationships are reluctant to refinance bonds of companies with poor cash flow prospects fearing future investor outflows as a...