Asset Fire Sales or Assets on Fire?

Abstract

I propose a new method to isolate a plausibly exogenous component of mutual fund flows in order to estimate the price impact of fire sales. The method addresses a potential reverse causality problem: instead of mutual fund outflows inducing fire sales, which drive down prices, poor stock returns reduce mutual fund returns, which in turn trigger outflows. The solution is to construct a new instrument from high-frequency surprise flows. Using surprise flows to reexamine important findings in the literature, I find equity markets are deeper and less distortive than suggested.