What Drives Flight to Quality?
77 Pages Posted: 26 Sep 2015 Last revised: 17 Aug 2017
There are 2 versions of this paper
What Drives Flight to Quality?
What Drives Flight to Quality?
Date Written: August 16, 2017
Abstract
The returns of equities and bonds tend to be positively correlated, but in extreme situations this relation reverses. Large negative equity returns co-occur with large positive bond returns. This is potentially caused by investors reassessing their risk preferences and shifting their wealth to less risky asset classes which is frequently termed flight to quality. We examine macroeconomic factors in order to identify the driving variables using a conditional copula model. Analyzing quarterly data from 1952 to 2014 we find that the treasury bill rate is the most significant driver. This insight is useful for asset allocation and risk management.
Keywords: Dependence structure, conditional copula, flight to quality, macroeconomic factors
JEL Classification: G12, C58, E44
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
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