Insurance companies often follow highly correlated investment strategies. As major investors in corporate bonds, their investment commonalities subject investors to fire-sale risk when regulatory restrictions prompt widespread divestment of a bond following a rating downgrade. Reflective of...

Mark-to-market accounting, as required by FAS No. 157, has been implicated as a contributor to the financial meltdown caused by the housing crisis and the consequent write-down of securities backed by mortgages (MBS) and collateralized debt obligations (CDO). In this paper, we investigate the...