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Working Paper
Flights to Safety
Using only daily data on bond and stock returns, we identify and characterize flight to safety (FTS) episodes for 23 countries. On average, FTS days comprise less than 3% of the sample, and bond returns exceed equity returns by 2.5 to 4%. The majority of FTS events are country-specific not global. FTS episodes coincide with increases in the VIX and the Ted spread, decreases in consumer sentiment indicators and appreciations of the Yen, Swiss franc, and US dollar. The financial, basic materials and industrial industries under-perform in FTS episodes, but the telecom industry outperforms. Money ...
Working Paper
Central Bank Access and Flight to Safety
We examine whether access to the Federal Reserve's Overnight Reverse Repo Facility (ON RRP) affects money market fund flows during flight-to-safety episodes. We find that funds with ON RRP access serving sophisticated investors experience about a 1 percentage point increase in net daily flows over total assets during the March 2020 flight-to-safety episode relative to similar funds without access. The effect aligns with theoretical predictions and explains more than half of the inflows in those funds. Our results show that access to central bank deposit facilities amplifies flight-to-safety ...