• The Korean Journal of Financial Management
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.169-204
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• 2010

This paper examines the dynamic relationship between fund flow and market risk at the aggregate level and explores whether sudden sharp changes in fund flow (fund run) can cause a systemic risk in the Korean financial markets. We use daily and weekly data and regression and VAR analysis. Main results of the paper are as follows: First, in the stock market, a concurrent and a lagged unexpected fund flows have a positive relationship with market volatility. A positive shock in fund flow predicts an increase in stock market volatility. In the bond market, an unexpected fund flow has a negative relationship with the default risk premium, but a positive relationship with the term premium. And an unexpected fund flow of the money market fund has a negative relationship with the liquidy risk, but the explanatory power is very low. Second, for examining whether changes in fund flow induce a systemic risk, we construct a spillover index based on the forecast error variance decomposition of VAR model. A spillover index represents that how much the shock in fund flow can explain the change of market risk in a market. In general, explanatory powers from spillover indexes are so fluctuant and low. In the stock market, the impact of shocks in fund flow on market risk is relatively high and persistent during the period from the end of 2007 to 2008, which is the subprime-mortgage crisis period. In bond market, since the end of 2008, the impact of shocks in fund flow spreads to default risk continually, while in the money market, such a systematic effect doesn't take place. The persistent patterns of spillover effect appearing around a certain period in the stock market and the bond market suggest that the shock to the unexpected fund flow may increase the market risk and can be a cause of systemic risk in the financial markets. However, summarizing the results of regression and VAR model analysis, and considering the very low explanatory power of spillover index analysis, we can conclude that changes in fund flow have a very limited power in explaining changes in market risk and it is not very likely to induce the systemic risk by a fund run in the Korean financial markets.