Corporate bond mutual funds and asset fire sales
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Abstract
Corporate bond mutual funds engage in liquidity transformation, raising concerns among academics and policy makers 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 issuer-level information that could also affect funds' trading decisions, using a novel identification strategy that exploits same-issuer bonds held by funds with differing outflows. We attribute our findings, which contrast with those found for equity funds, to funds' liquidity management strategies. Bond funds maintain significant liquidity cushions and selectively trade liquid assets, allowing them to absorb investor redemption risk without excessively liquidating corporate bonds, even during the 2008 financial crisis.