Organizational form and liquidity management: Evidence from open- vs. closed-end municipal bond funds

John Chalmers, Z. Jay Wang and Jingyun Yang

Finance Research Letters, 2025, vol. 73, issue C

Abstract: This paper studies how the organizational forms of open- and closed-end funds affect their ability to manage illiquid assets. We use a sample of municipal bond funds from 2002 to 2015 to compare the portfolio liquidity and performance of open- and closed-end funds. We find that immunity to redemption risk allows closed-end funds to hold more illiquid municipal bonds than open-end funds, and they charge higher management fees for such liquidity provision. Closed-end funds earn liquidity premiums from their illiquid holdings. They significantly underperform peer open-end funds after controlling for their exposure to liquidity risk. Highly leveraged closed-end funds are subject to systematic liquidity risk. We find that closed-end funds with higher leverage hold more liquid municipal bonds. They trade more liquid municipal bonds to reduce the potential costs at forced deleverage.

Keywords: Closed-end fund; Open-end fund; Organizational form; Liquidity management (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:finlet:v:73:y:2025:i:c:s1544612324015289

DOI: 10.1016/j.frl.2024.106499

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