Flight to Safety from European Stock Markets

This paper investigates flight-to-safety from stocks to bonds in seven European markets. We use quantile regressions to identify flight-to-safety episodes. The simple risk-return trade-off on the stock markets is negative which is caused by flight-to-safety episodes: During normal periods, the risk-return trade-off is positive and during flight-to-safety episodes it is negative. The effects of flight-to-safety episodes on the risk-return trade-off are qualitatively similar for own country flight-to-safety episodes, for flight from own country stock market to the US bond market, and for US flight-to-safety. The strength of the trade-off is strongest for own country flight-to-safety episodes. The risk-return trade-off is not significantly influenced by recession periods or the recent sovereign debt crisis. The main results hold for flight to gold instead of to bonds.