{"title":"How Safe are Money Market Funds?","authors":"Marcin T. Kacperczyk, P. Schnabl","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.1769025","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"We examine the risk-taking behavior of money market funds during the fi nancial 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; (4) funds suff ered 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.","PeriodicalId":146991,"journal":{"name":"AFA 2012 Chicago Meetings (Archive)","volume":"60 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2013-03-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"1","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"AFA 2012 Chicago Meetings (Archive)","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1769025","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 1
Abstract
We examine the risk-taking behavior of money market funds during the fi nancial 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; (4) funds suff ered 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.