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...

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...

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...

This paper employs data on corporate bond mutual fund flows to investigate bond investments under low interest rates. In response to the Fed’s lower interest rate policy, we find that investment-grade bond funds receive inflows, while high-yield bond funds are not responsive. This result can...

Investors seek to hedge against interest rate risk by taking long or short positions on bonds ofdifferent maturities. We study changes in risk taking behavior in a low interest rateenvironment by estimating a market stochastic discount factor that is non-linear and thereforeconsistent with the...

The purpose of this paper is to study the compensation for in ation risks priced in sovereign bond yields. And we do so by modelling the time-varying dynamics of asset returns and inflation, and then estimating the cost of hedging in ation risks from the perspective of a well diversified...

Bonds issued in high and low interest-rate environments often list at different prices despite very similar characteristics. From a risk-neutral investor's perspective, higher current prices imply higher losses in case of default, which must be compensated, if markets are efficient. We call this...

In almost every financial market crisis we can observe widening credit spreads, especially in the last years during the subprime and sovereign debt crisis. But what exactly drives the credit spread? This paper will outline static components, i.e. default risk, liquidity, risk and the relative...

This paper investigates the sensitivity of the demand for safe government debt to currency unhedged and hedged excess returns in a sample of US mutual funds. We find evidence of active rebalancing towards government bonds that offer relatively higher returns on an unhedged basis, in particular...

In this paper, we aim at constructing a global risk model using the term structure from major bond-issuing countries. The goal is twofold: first this allows quantifying global interest rate risk (level, slope and curvature effects), providing insights on global risks at play. Secondly, such...