How Safe Are Money Market Funds?

Marcin Kacperczyk and Philipp Schnabl

The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2013, vol. 128, issue 3, 1073-1122

Abstract: We examine the risk-taking behavior of money market funds during the financial crisis of 2007--2010. We find that (1) money market funds experienced an unprecedented expansion in their risk-taking opportunities; (2) funds had strong incentives to take on risk because fund inflows were highly responsive to fund yields; (3) funds sponsored by financial intermediaries with more money fund business took on more risk; and (4) funds suffered runs as a result of their risk taking. This evidence suggests that money market funds lack safety because they have strong incentives to take on risk when the opportunity arises and are vulnerable to runs. JEL Codes: G21, G23, E44. Copyright 2013, Oxford University Press.

Date: 2013
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (132)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/qje/qjt010 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:qjecon:v:128:y:2013:i:3:p:1073-1122

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

The Quarterly Journal of Economics is currently edited by Robert J. Barro, Lawrence F. Katz, Nathan Nunn, Andrei Shleifer and Stefanie Stantcheva

More articles in The Quarterly Journal of Economics from President and Fellows of Harvard College
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().