Despite a large and growing theoretical literature on flights to safety, there does not appear to exist an empirical characterization of flight-to-safety (FTS) episodes. Using only data on bond and stock returns, we identify and characterize flight to safety episodes for 23 countries. On...

We apply causality extraction (CE) algorithms on more than 36,000 articles from 2 major financial newspapers (WSJ, FT) and three major newswires (DJ, MNI Market News, Reuters) over the extended period 1980-2020 to shed light on the fundamental triggers of flights to safety. Our CE algorithm...

Institutional funds have concentrated ownership by a few institutional investors, infrequent outflows and essentially no leverage. Yet using unique granular data on the bond holdings of institutional funds, we show that their trading behavior is strongly procyclical: they actively move into...

Cumulative Prospect Theory (CPT) can explain the variance premium puzzle. We solve a simple equilibrium model with CPT investors and find that probability weighting plays a key role in generating a substantial variance premium, while loss aversion captures the equity premium. Using GMM on a...

We develop a tractable equilibrium asset pricing model with Cumulative Prospect Theory (CPT) preferences. Using GMM on a sample of U.S. equity index option returns, we show that by introducing a single common probability weighting parameter for both tails of the return distribution, the CPT...

We use unique institutional securities holdings data to examine the trading behaviour of delegated institutional capital and its impact on bond risk premia. We show that institutional fund managers trade strongly procyclically: they actively move into higher yielding, longer duration and lower...

Institutional funds have concentrated ownership by a few institutional investors, infrequent outflows and essentially no leverage. Yet using unique granular data on the bond holdings of institutional funds, we show that their trading behavior is strongly procyclical: they actively move into...

Cumulative Prospect Theory (CPT) can explain the variance premium puzzle. We solve a simple equilibrium model with CPT investors and find that probability weighting plays a key role in generating a substantial variance premium, while loss aversion captures the equity premium. Using GMM on a...

We identify flight-to-safety (FTS) days for 23 countries using only stock and bond returns and a model averaging approach. FTS days comprise less than 2% of the sample, and are associated with a 2.7% average bond-equity return differential and significant flows out of equity funds and into...

We identify flight-to-safety (FTS) days for 23 countries using only stock and bond returns and a model averaging approach. FTS days comprise less than 2% of the sample, and are associated with a 2.7% average bond-equity return differential and significant flows out of equity funds and into...