International Capital Flows and Bond Risk Premia

We investigate whether foreign purchases of long-term U.S. Treasury securities significantly affect their expected excess-returns. We run predictive regressions of realized excess returns on measures of net purchases of treasuries by both foreign official and private agents. We find that official flows, with a negative effect, appear similar to relative supply shocks; private flows, with a positive impact, resemble flows that absorb excess-supply and are thus compensated for this service, similar to the role of arbitrageurs. The results are robust to out-of-sample tests and the use of benchmark survey-consistent adjusted flows data.