Fire Sales Forensics: Measuring Endogenous Risk
37 Pages Posted: 4 May 2012 Last revised: 5 Feb 2013
Date Written: May 4, 2012
Abstract
We propose a tractable framework for quantifying the impact of fire sales on the volatility and correlations of asset returns in a multi-asset setting. Our results enable to quantify the impact of fire sales on the covariance structure of asset returns and provide a quantitative explanation for spikes in volatility and correlations observed during liquidation of large portfolios. These results allow to estimate the impact and magnitude of fire sales from observation of market prices: we give conditions for the identifiability of model parameters from time series of asset prices, propose an estimator for the magnitude of fire sales in each asset class and study the consistency and large sample properties of the estimator. We illustrate our estimation methodology with two empirical examples: the hedge fund losses of August 2007 and the Great Deleveraging following the Lehman default.
Keywords: fire sales, endogenous risk, systemic risk, liquidity, financial econometrics, correlation, volatility
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?
Recommended Papers
-
Illiquidity and Stock Returns: Cross-Section and Time-Series Effects
By Yakov Amihud
-
Illiquidity and Stock Returns: Cross-Section and Time-Series Effects
By Yakov Amihud
-
Liquidity Risk and Expected Stock Returns
By Lubos Pastor and Robert F. Stambaugh
-
Liquidity Risk and Expected Stock Returns
By Lubos Pastor and Robert F. Stambaugh
-
Liquidity Risk and Expected Stock Returns
By Lubos Pastor and Robert F. Stambaugh
-
Is Information Risk a Determinant of Asset Returns?
By David Easley, Soeren Hvidkjaer, ...
-
By Tarun Chordia, Avanidhar Subrahmanyam, ...
-
Common Factors in Prices, Order Flows and Liquidity
By Joel Hasbrouck and Duane J. Seppi
-
Common Factors in Prices, Order Flows and Liquidity
By Joel Hasbrouck and Duane J. Seppi