IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/9312.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Flight-to-Liquidity Premium in U.S. Treasury Bond Prices

Author

Listed:
  • Francis A. Longstaff

Abstract

We examine whether there is a flight-to-liquidity premium in Treasury bond prices by comparing them with prices of bonds issued by Refcorp, a U.S. Government agency, which are guaranteed by the Treasury. We find a large liquidity premium in Treasury bonds, which can be more than fifteen percent of the value of some Treasury bonds. This liquidity premium is related to changes in consumer confidence, the amount of Treasury debt available to investors, and flows into equity and money market mutual funds. This suggests that the popularity of Treasury bonds directly a.ects their value.

Suggested Citation

  • Francis A. Longstaff, 2002. "The Flight-to-Liquidity Premium in U.S. Treasury Bond Prices," NBER Working Papers 9312, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:9312
    Note: AP
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w9312.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Menachem Brenner & Rafi Eldor & Shmuel Hauser, 2001. "The Price of Options Illiquidity," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(2), pages 789-805, April.
    2. Bengt Holmström & Jean Tirole, 2001. "LAPM: A Liquidity‐Based Asset Pricing Model," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(5), pages 1837-1867, October.
    3. Bengt Holmstrom & Jean Tirole, 1998. "Private and Public Supply of Liquidity," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 106(1), pages 1-40, February.
    4. Douglas W. Diamond & Philip H. Dybvig, 2000. "Bank runs, deposit insurance, and liquidity," Quarterly Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, vol. 24(Win), pages 14-23.
    5. Lippman, Steven A & McCall, John J, 1986. "An Operational Measure of Liquidity," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(1), pages 43-55, March.
    6. Kamara, A., 1988. "Trading Structures And Asset Pricing: Evidence From The Treasury Bill Markets," Papers 169, Columbia - Center for Futures Markets.
    7. Jun Liu, 2004. "Losing Money on Arbitrage: Optimal Dynamic Portfolio Choice in Markets with Arbitrage Opportunities," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 17(3), pages 611-641.
    8. Mark Grinblatt & Francis A. Longstaff, 2000. "Financial Innovation and the Role of Derivative Securities: An Empirical Analysis of the Treasury STRIPS Program," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 55(3), pages 1415-1436, June.
    9. Longstaff, Francis A., 2000. "The term structure of very short-term rates: New evidence for the expectations hypothesis," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(3), pages 397-415, December.
    10. Duffee, Gregory R, 1999. "Estimating the Price of Default Risk," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 12(1), pages 197-226.
    11. Nelson, Charles R & Siegel, Andrew F, 1987. "Parsimonious Modeling of Yield Curves," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 60(4), pages 473-489, October.
    12. Jordan, Bradford D. & Kuipers, David R., 1997. "Negative option values are possible: The impact of Treasury bond futures on the cash U.S. Treasury market," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(1), pages 67-102, October.
    13. Duffie, Darrell & Singleton, Kenneth J, 1999. "Modeling Term Structures of Defaultable Bonds," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 12(4), pages 687-720.
    14. Boudoukh, Jacob & Whitelaw, Robert F, 1993. "Liquidity as a Choice Variable: A Lesson from the Japanese Government Bond Market," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 6(2), pages 265-292.
    15. Woodford, Michael, 1990. "Public Debt as Private Liquidity," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(2), pages 382-388, May.
    16. Holmstrom, Bengt & Tirole, Jean, 1996. "Modeling Aggregate Liquidity," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 86(2), pages 187-191, May.
    17. Jordan, Bradford D. & Jorgensen, Randy D. & Kuipers, David R., 2000. "The relative pricing of U.S. Treasury STRIPS: empirical evidence," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(1), pages 89-123, April.
    18. Avraham Kamara, 1988. "Market Trading Structures and Asset Pricing: Evidence from the Treasury- Bill Markets," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 1(4), pages 357-375.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Longstaff, Francis A., 2001. "The Flight-to-Liquidity Premium in U.S. Treasury Bond Prices," University of California at Los Angeles, Anderson Graduate School of Management qt7dc0t95b, Anderson Graduate School of Management, UCLA.
    2. Liu, Jun & Longstaff, Francis A. & Mandell, Ravit E., 2000. "The Market Price of Credit Risk: An Empirical Analysis of Interest Rate Swap Spreads," University of California at Los Angeles, Anderson Graduate School of Management qt0zw4f9w6, Anderson Graduate School of Management, UCLA.
    3. Filippo Taddei, 2007. "Liquidity and the Allocation of Credit: Business Cycle, Government Debt and Financial Arrangements," Carlo Alberto Notebooks 65, Collegio Carlo Alberto.
    4. Matthias Fleckenstein & Francis A. Longstaff & Hanno Lustig, 2010. "Why Does the Treasury Issue Tips? The Tips-Treasury Bond Puzzle," NBER Working Papers 16358, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Longstaff, Francis A, 2005. "Asset Pricing in Markets with Illiquid Assets," University of California at Los Angeles, Anderson Graduate School of Management qt2458g38x, Anderson Graduate School of Management, UCLA.
    6. Kurt F. Lewis & Francis A. Longstaff & Lubomir Petrasek, 2017. "Asset Mispricing," NBER Working Papers 23231, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Lim, Terence & Lo, Andrew W. & Merton, Robert C. & Scholes, Myron S., 2006. "The Derivatives Sourcebook," Foundations and Trends(R) in Finance, now publishers, vol. 1(5–6), pages 365-572, April.
    8. Costantini, Mauro & Sousa, Ricardo M., 2022. "What uncertainty does to euro area sovereign bond markets: Flight to safety and flight to quality," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 122(C).
    9. Francis A. Longstaff, 2004. "Financial Claustrophobia: Asset Pricing in Illiquid Markets," NBER Working Papers 10411, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Fernando A. Broner & Guido Lorenzoni & Sergio L. Schmukler, 2013. "Why Do Emerging Economies Borrow Short Term?," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 11, pages 67-100, January.
    11. Eisfeldt, Andrea L., 2007. "Smoothing with liquid and illiquid assets," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(6), pages 1572-1586, September.
    12. John Y. Campbell & Glen B. Taksler, 2003. "Equity Volatility and Corporate Bond Yields," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 58(6), pages 2321-2350, December.
    13. Park, Hyun Woong & Bernardin, Thomas, 2018. "Liquidity, bank runs, and fire sales under local thinking," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 89-102.
    14. Julien Bengui & Javier Bianchi & Louphou Coulibaly, 2019. "Financial Safety Nets," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 60(1), pages 105-132, February.
    15. Mitusch, Kay, 2002. "Debt contracts, banks, and aggregate liquidity," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 74(2), pages 145-150, January.
    16. Ernesto Pasten, 2020. "Prudential Policies and Bailouts: A Delicate Interaction," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 38, pages 181-197, October.
    17. Ricardo J. Caballero & Arvind Krishnamurthy, 2006. "Flight to Quality and Collective Risk Management," NBER Working Papers 12136, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Emmanuel Farhi & Jean Tirole, 2012. "Collective Moral Hazard, Maturity Mismatch, and Systemic Bailouts," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(1), pages 60-93, February.
    19. Dufour, Alfonso & Stancu, Andrei & Varotto, Simone, 2017. "The equity-like behaviour of sovereign bonds," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 25-46.
    20. Jean Tirole, 2011. "Illiquidity and All Its Friends," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 49(2), pages 287-325, June.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Lists

    This item is featured on the following reading lists, Wikipedia, or ReplicationWiki pages:
    1. Flight-to-liquidity in Wikipedia English

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:9312. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.