Asset Managers and Financial Instability: Evidence of Run Behavior and Run Incentives in Corporate Bond Funds

Abstract

Asset managers may be a source of systemic risk due to their risk-taking strategies and vulnerability to dramatic outflows. Investor withdrawals trigger asset sales and redemption costs that only impact remaining investors in the fund. Liquidation lag and mark-to-market lag translate these redemption costs into run incentives. This paper first tests for run-like behavior in corporate bond mutual funds and then tests for the underlying run incentive, measured by the NAV impact. I find that illiquid bond funds are significantly more sensitive to past performance than liquid funds and experience up to 43.6% more outflows given a 1% decrease in returns. Furthermore, net flows into bond funds held primarily by institutional investors are less sensitive to performance but more sensitive to illiquidity than flows into funds held by retail investors, suggesting that institutional bond funds may be more vulnerable to runs. Finally, using a novel dataset, I proxy for the illiquidity of a fund’s underlying bonds and quantify the run incentive. Given 10% net outflows, funds that have insufficient cash and hold bonds of illiquidity 3-5 deviations from the mean experience a significant decrease in NAV of about 34-49 basis points. This paper contributes to the mutual fund and runs literature by offering new empirical evidence of run behavior and run incentives in corporate bond funds.