The Turn of the Year in Money Markets: Tests of the Risk‐Shifting Window Dressing and Preferred Habitat Hypotheses

Abstract
Musto (1997) identifies a turn-of-the-year effect in the commercial paper market and offers risk-shifting window dressing as an explanation. We revisit this market with different methods and find strong evidence rejecting the risk-shifting hypothesis. We extend our analysis to other private-issue money market instruments and find similar results. We find further corroborating evidence in the 1-month T-bill market and aggregate demand deposit data. Our results are consistent with a year-end preferred habitat for liquidity associated with year-end cash flow obligations.