The Equity Home Bias Puzzle

The Equity Home Bias Puzzle PDF Author: Ian Cooper
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781601987631
Category : International finance
Languages : en
Pages : 133

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Book Description
Home bias - the empirical phenomenon that investors assign anomalously high weights to their own domestic assets - has puzzled academics for decades: financial theory predicts that an internationally well diversified portfolio of stocks and short-term bonds can reduce risk significantly without affecting expected return. Although the globalization of international equity markets has increased international investments, equity portfolios remain severely home biased today, and no single explanation seems to solve the puzzle completely. In this paper, we first provide a thorough description of the equity home bias phenomenon by defining, discussing, and applying the competing measures and presenting some estimates of the costs of under-diversification. Second, we evaluate the explanations for the equity home bias proposed in the literature such as information asymmetries, behavioral aspects, barriers to foreign investment, and governance issues, and conclude that each explanation on its own falls short, suggesting that the equity home bias probably reflects a combination of factors. Lastly, we review the implications of international under-diversification for portfolio formation and the cost of capital of companies.

The Equity Home Bias Puzzle

The Equity Home Bias Puzzle PDF Author: Ian Cooper
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781601987631
Category : International finance
Languages : en
Pages : 133

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Book Description
Home bias - the empirical phenomenon that investors assign anomalously high weights to their own domestic assets - has puzzled academics for decades: financial theory predicts that an internationally well diversified portfolio of stocks and short-term bonds can reduce risk significantly without affecting expected return. Although the globalization of international equity markets has increased international investments, equity portfolios remain severely home biased today, and no single explanation seems to solve the puzzle completely. In this paper, we first provide a thorough description of the equity home bias phenomenon by defining, discussing, and applying the competing measures and presenting some estimates of the costs of under-diversification. Second, we evaluate the explanations for the equity home bias proposed in the literature such as information asymmetries, behavioral aspects, barriers to foreign investment, and governance issues, and conclude that each explanation on its own falls short, suggesting that the equity home bias probably reflects a combination of factors. Lastly, we review the implications of international under-diversification for portfolio formation and the cost of capital of companies.

Measures of Equity Home Bias Puzzle

Measures of Equity Home Bias Puzzle PDF Author: Anil V. Mishra
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 20

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Book Description
The paper develops measures of home bias for 46 countries over the period 2001 to 2011 by employing various models: International Capital Asset Pricing Model (ICAPM), Mean-Variance, Minimum-Variance, Bayes-Stein, Bayesian and Multi-Prior. ICAPM country portfolio weights are computed relative to world market capitalization. Bayesian model allows for various degrees of mis-trust in the ICAPM and Multi-Prior model's investors' ambiguity aversion. Mean-Variance computes optimal weights by sample estimates of mean and covariance matrix of sample return and Bayes-Stein improves precision associated with estimating the expected return of each asset. Paper finds that, for few countries, there is not much change in home bias measures using various models. Foreign listing, idiosyncratic risk, beta, inflation, natural resources rents, size, global financial crisis and institutional quality have significant impact on home bias. There are policy implications associated with home bias.

Equity Home Bias in International Finance

Equity Home Bias in International Finance PDF Author: Kavous Ardalan
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000008274
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 393

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Book Description
This book provides a comprehensive and critical analysis of research outcomes on the equity home bias puzzle – that people overinvest in domestic stocks relative to the theoretically optimal investment portfolio. It introduces place attachment – the bonding that occurs between individuals and their meaningful environments – as a new explanation for equity home bias, and presents a philosophically multi-paradigmatic view of place attachment. For the first time, a comprehensive and up-to-date review of the extant literature is provided, demonstrating that place attachment is a contributing factor to 22 different topics in which variations of home bias are present. The author also analyses the social-psychological underpinnings of place attachment, and considers the effect of multi-culturalism on the future of equity home bias. The book’s unique approach discusses the issues in conceptual terms rather than through data and statistical methods. This multi- and inter-disciplinary book is an invaluable resource for graduate students and researchers interested in economics, finance, philosophy, and/or methodology, introducing them to a new line of research.

The Equity Home Bias Puzzle

The Equity Home Bias Puzzle PDF Author: Felix Rebmann
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 54

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Book Description


Equity Home Bias in International Finance

Equity Home Bias in International Finance PDF Author: Kavous Ardalan
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000001431
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description
This book provides a comprehensive and critical analysis of research outcomes on the equity home bias puzzle – that people overinvest in domestic stocks relative to the theoretically optimal investment portfolio. It introduces place attachment – the bonding that occurs between individuals and their meaningful environments – as a new explanation for equity home bias, and presents a philosophically multi-paradigmatic view of place attachment. For the first time, a comprehensive and up-to-date review of the extant literature is provided, demonstrating that place attachment is a contributing factor to 22 different topics in which variations of home bias are present. The author also analyses the social-psychological underpinnings of place attachment, and considers the effect of multi-culturalism on the future of equity home bias. The book’s unique approach discusses the issues in conceptual terms rather than through data and statistical methods. This multi- and inter-disciplinary book is an invaluable resource for graduate students and researchers interested in economics, finance, philosophy, and/or methodology, introducing them to a new line of research.

External Habit Formation and the Home Bias Puzzle

External Habit Formation and the Home Bias Puzzle PDF Author: Stephen H. Shore
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 47

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Book Description
The equity home bias, the observed lack of international diversification in equity portfolios, is a persistent puzzle in international finance. We propose an explanation for this puzzle based on external habit formation preferences. Agents' utility depends on the difference between consumption and a slow-moving subsistence level. The subsistence level, or external habit, is a backward-looking moving average of national aggregate consumption. We assume that a small group of agents holds primarily domestic securities. We can think of these agents as small business owners who are forced to hold domestic assets for agency reasons. If the remaining agents have external habit formation utility, then they will mimic the domestic bias of this small group. We perform a calibration using consumption and asset return moments from several countries and show that this effect can potentially explain a large aggregate holding of domestic assets. The model performs especially well in explaining high equity home bias in small countries, where the observed lack of international diversification is most puzzling.

Equity Home Bias

Equity Home Bias PDF Author: Adam Hantak
Publisher: diplom.de
ISBN: 3842821530
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 76

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Book Description
Inhaltsangabe:Introduction: Every investor faces the challenge of making the right investment decisions. Upon analysing the allocation of wealth among countries, it becomes evident that investors do not invest their financial wealth internationally, but tend to invest the majority of their wealth in domestic equity. Financial theory deems this behaviour irrational, since holding a domestic portfolio is considered to be suboptimal due to the foregone benefits of international diversification. Assuming that the financial theory is right in this prediction, the question as to what are the causes for this irrational behaviour comes to mind and forms the focal point of this work. One the one hand, investors may be well aware of the costs connected with holding a domestic portfolio. Market restrictions, however, do not allow investors to attain the optimal international portfolio. On the other hand, investors may be unaware of the benefits of international diversification, and instead have a preference for domestic equity and fail to perceive the domestic portfolio as suboptimal. The traditional financial theory for this behaviour provides the institutional explanations with the focus on market imperfections and the behavioural financial theory provides explanations with the focus on investor irrationality. Following this classification of both theories, this work briefly reviews institutional explanations, as many of them lack empirical evidence and concentrates mainly on the behavioural explanations, as they are the focal point of current research and find wide empirical support. After defining equity home bias and related concepts in Chapter 2, the costs of equity home bias are discussed in Chapter 3. In Chapter 4, institutional explanations are considered. Section 4.1 reviews briefly a number of older institutional explanations, such as direct investment barriers, transactions costs and taxes, as they do not find much empirical support. Section 4.2 explores in more detail an explanation based on information asymmetry, as it may at least partially contribute to the solution of the home bias problem. With the emergence and acceptance of behavioural finance new explanations based on irrationality of investors were advanced and are presented in Chapter 5. Section 5.1 explores optimistic expectations about domestic markets as one of the early behavioural explanations. Section 5.2 deals with the competence hypothesis and creates a foundation for the [...]

International Capital Flows

International Capital Flows PDF Author: Martin Feldstein
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226241807
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 500

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Book Description
Recent changes in technology, along with the opening up of many regions previously closed to investment, have led to explosive growth in the international movement of capital. Flows from foreign direct investment and debt and equity financing can bring countries substantial gains by augmenting local savings and by improving technology and incentives. Investing companies acquire market access, lower cost inputs, and opportunities for profitable introductions of production methods in the countries where they invest. But, as was underscored recently by the economic and financial crises in several Asian countries, capital flows can also bring risks. Although there is no simple explanation of the currency crisis in Asia, it is clear that fixed exchange rates and chronic deficits increased the likelihood of a breakdown. Similarly, during the 1970s, the United States and other industrial countries loaned OPEC surpluses to borrowers in Latin America. But when the U.S. Federal Reserve raised interest rates to control soaring inflation, the result was a widespread debt moratorium in Latin America as many countries throughout the region struggled to pay the high interest on their foreign loans. International Capital Flows contains recent work by eminent scholars and practitioners on the experience of capital flows to Latin America, Asia, and eastern Europe. These papers discuss the role of banks, equity markets, and foreign direct investment in international capital flows, and the risks that investors and others face with these transactions. By focusing on capital flows' productivity and determinants, and the policy issues they raise, this collection is a valuable resource for economists, policymakers, and financial market participants.

Does Asymmetric Information Cause the Home Equity Bias?

Does Asymmetric Information Cause the Home Equity Bias? PDF Author: Claudio Bravo-Ortega
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Home equity loans
Languages : en
Pages : 28

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Book Description
"The home equity bias is one of the many puzzles existing in international finance. This puzzle is characterized by the concentration of domestic equity in any investor's portfolio, which is in contradiction with the benchmark of full diversification in a world mutual fund. Based on Admati's (1985) and Gehrig's (1993) noisy rational expectation models, Bravo-Ortega tries to explain the effect of asymmetric information in the home equity bias puzzle. While asymmetric information helps to explain the puzzle for the case of one domestic and one foreign equity, this result relies on very restrictive assumptions. Using a model with one domestic asset and two foreign assets, the author illustrates that asymmetries of information are also consistent with home equity bias reversals. One proposition generalizes these results. Simulations corroborate the main theoretical predictions of the model presented by the author. This paper is a product of the Office of the Chief Economist, Latin America and the Caribbean Region"--World Bank web site.

Equity Home Bias and the Euro

Equity Home Bias and the Euro PDF Author: Hisham S. Foad
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 31

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Book Description
This paper examines explanations for the equity home bias puzzle by utilizing the introduction of the euro in 1999 as a natural experiment. Equity home bias is the observation that although investors could attain both lower risk and greater returns by increasing international diversification in their equity portfolios, they fail to do so. Currency risk, informational asymmetries, transaction costs, and investor sentiment have all been presented as explanations for the bias with varying degrees of success. The introduction of the euro and the coordination of monetary policy across the Euro Area (EA) allows for a closer examination of these potential explanations. Optimal foreign equity shares are derived from a version of the CAP-M and then empirically tested using detailed data from the IMF's Coordinated Portfolio Investment Survey covering the foreign equity holdings of 23 countries for the years 1997 and 2001-2004. The key results of this analysis are that while equity home bias has fallen worldwide over this period, by far the sharpest drop has been for intra-EA equity holdings with home bias falling from 68% to 29% between the pre and post-euro periods. Several explanations for this drop are tested, with the reduction in information asymmetries emerging as the most promising candidate.