Cyclical Investment Behavior Across Financial Institutions

This paper contrasts the investment behavior of different financial institutions in debt securities as a response to past returns. For identification, I use unique security-level data from the German Microdatabase Securities Holdings Statistics. Banks and investment funds respond in a pro-cyclical manner to past security-specific holding period returns. In contrast, insurance companies and pension funds act counter-cyclically; they buy when returns have been negative and sell after high returns. The heterogeneous responses can be explained by differences in their balance sheet structure. I exploit within-sector variation in the financial constraint to show that tighter constraints are associated with relatively more pro-cyclical investment behavior.