Flights to Safety

National Bank of Belgium Working Paper No. 230

75 Pages Posted: 13 Oct 2012 Last revised: 16 Jan 2019

See all articles by Lieven Baele

Lieven Baele

Tilburg University - Department of Finance

Geert Bekaert

Columbia University - Columbia Business School, Finance

Koen Inghelbrecht

Ghent University - Department of Economics

Min Wei

Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System

Multiple version iconThere are 5 versions of this paper

Date Written: June 27, 2018

Abstract

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 government bond and money market funds. FTS represents flights to both quality and liquidity in international equity markets, but mainly a flight-to-quality in the US corporate bond market. Emerging markets, endowment funds, and hedge funds all perform poorly during FTS, while hedge funds appear to vary their systematic exposures prior to a FTS.

Keywords: Flight-to-Safety, Flight-to-Quality, Stock-Bond Return Correlation, Liquidity, Hedge Funds

JEL Classification: G11, G12, G14, E43, E44

Suggested Citation

Baele, Lieven and Bekaert, Geert and Inghelbrecht, Koen and Wei, Min, Flights to Safety (June 27, 2018). National Bank of Belgium Working Paper No. 230, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2160858 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2160858

Lieven Baele (Contact Author)

Tilburg University - Department of Finance ( email )

P.O. Box 90153
Tilburg, 5000 LE
Netherlands
+31 13 466 3257 (Phone)
+31 13 466 2875 (Fax)

Geert Bekaert

Columbia University - Columbia Business School, Finance ( email )

NY
United States

Koen Inghelbrecht

Ghent University - Department of Economics ( email )

Sint-Pietersplein 5
Ghent, B-9000
Belgium
+32 9 264 89 77 (Phone)

HOME PAGE: http://users.ugent.be/~kjinghel/

Min Wei

Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System ( email )

20th Street and Constitution Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20551
United States

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