Investor Diversification and International Equity Markets
Investor Diversification and International Equity Markets

Author: Kenneth R. French

Publisher:

Published: 1991

Total Pages: 36

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The benefits of international diversification have been recognized for decades. In spite of this, most investors hold nearly all of their wealth in domestic assets. In this paper, we construct new estimates of the international equity portfolio holdings of investors in the U.S., Japan, and Britain. More than 98% of the equity portfolio of Japanese investors is held domestically; the analogous percentages are 94% for the U.S., and 82% for Britain. We use a simple model of investor preferences and behavior to show that current portfolio patterns imply that investors in each nation expect returns in their domestic equity market to be several hundred basis points higher than returns in other markets. This lack of diversification appears to be the result of investor choices, rather than institutional constraints.

The Internationalization of Equity Markets
The Internationalization of Equity Markets

Author: Jeffrey A. Frankel

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2008-04-15

Total Pages: 428

ISBN-13: 0226260216

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This timely volume addresses three important recent trends in the internationalization of United States equity markets: extensive market integration through foreign investment and links among stock prices around the world; increasing securitization as countries such as Japan come to rely more than ever before on markets in equities and bonds at the expense of banks; and the opening of national financial systems of newly industrializing countries to international financial flows and institutions, as governments remove capital controls and other barriers. Eight essays examine such issues as the current extent of international market integration, gains to U.S. investors through international diversification, home-country bias in investing, the role of time and location around the world in stock trading, and the behavior of country funds. Other, long-standing questions about equity markets are also addressed, including market efficiency and the accuracy of models of expected returns, with a particular focus on variances, covariances, and the price of risk according to the Capital Asset Pricing Model.

International Equity Exchange-Traded Funds
International Equity Exchange-Traded Funds

Author: Tomasz Miziołek

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2020-09-23

Total Pages: 388

ISBN-13: 3030538648

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book presents the economic foundation of international equity investments providing a practical guide to invest in international equity exchange-traded funds (ETFs). It shows how to gain exposure to foreign stock markets through both theoretical foundations of international diversification and in-depth characteristics of global, regional, country-specific, and international sector/thematic ETFs. Unlike other books in the field which broadly discuss different aspects of the ETF market, this book explores one specific market segment, offering the first in-depth and state-of-the-art analysis of international equity ETFs and including, in particular, ETFs with global, regional, single-country, and international sector/thematic exposures. The number and variety of such financial instruments are constantly growing. Hence, it seems obvious that there is an urgent need for a book that will help investors who are willing to diversify their portfolios outside the domestic market—in both developed and emerging/frontier markets. International Equity Exchange-Traded Funds presents a comprehensive review of investment possibilities offered by international ETFs for stock market investors.

International Capital Flows
International Capital Flows

Author: Martin Feldstein

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2007-12-01

Total Pages: 500

ISBN-13: 0226241807

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

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.

What Matters in International Equity Diversification?
What Matters in International Equity Diversification?

Author: Chun-Hung Chen

Publisher:

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 10

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Over the past decade, investors and financial advisors have shown renewed interest in increasing international equity exposure. Investors confront one of two key issues in making decisions on their strategic allocations, depending on the starting point of their portfolios: 1) for a U.S.-only equity portfolio, the issue is which strategies produce the most beneficial international exposure; 2) for a portfolio already with significant international exposure, the issue is what benefits are there in exploring small cap, micro cap, and new frontiers in international equity investing. We use mean-variance spanning and optimization tests of indexes to assess the comparative benefits of competing paths to international diversification of the equity segment of an investor's portfolio. We find that for investors with a U.S.-only stock segment in their portfolios, any of the international indexes examined substantially improve risk and return characteristics -- more evidence that home bias is costly. No clear winners emerge among the indexes, however. For the investor who already has a diversified portfolio of U.S. large and small cap, developed ex-U.S. large cap, and emerging markets large cap, an extension to frontier markets would be beneficial. The additional diversification and return benefits from extending to developed ex-U.S. small and micro cap as well as emerging markets small and micro cap are small.

Twenty Years of International Equity Investing
Twenty Years of International Equity Investing

Author: Richard O. Michaud

Publisher:

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 16

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

International equity portfolio diversification is now well accepted by investors around the world. It was a novel concept, and perceived as unusually risky, when proposed originally in the Journal by Bergstrom (1975). In the twenty years since, many other writers have described the risk reduction and return enhancement of carefully diversifying portfolios across different international equity markets. A comprehensive summary of the extensive literature appears in Solnik (1988).In these two decades, the benefits of global portfolio diversification have been largely accepted by the academic and professional investment communities. At this point, it is of interest to consider two critical questions: 1. Has international equity diversification achieved it original objectives of raising return per unit of risk for U.S.-based and other global investors? 2. What new routes are open to future global investors?

International Diversification at Home and Abroad
International Diversification at Home and Abroad

Author: Fang Cai

Publisher:

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 38

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

It is an established fact that investors favor the familiar%u2014be it domestic securities or, within a country, the securities of nearby firms%u2014and avoid investments that would provide the greatest diversification benefits. While we do not rule out familiarity as an important driver of portfolio allocations, we provide new evidence of investors%u2019 international diversification motive. In particular, our analysis of the security-level U.S. equity holdings of foreign and domestic institutional investors indicates that institutional investors reveal a preference for domestic multinationals (MNCs), even after controlling for familiarity factors. We attribute this revealed preference to the desire to obtain %u201Csafe%u201D international diversification. We then show that holdings of domestic MNCs are substantial and, after accounting for this home-grown foreign exposure, that the share of %u201Cforeign%u201D equities in investors%u2019 portfolios roughly doubles, reducing (but not eliminating) the observed home bias.

The International Equity Commitment
The International Equity Commitment

Author: Stephen Gorman

Publisher: Wiley

Published: 2000-04-14

Total Pages: 110

ISBN-13: 9780943205441

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The International Equity Commitment refutes that rising correlation and costs, increasing exchange rate volatility, and underperformance of non-U.S. markets make investing in international equity undesirable, or, at best, irrelevant. The author uses a detailed analysis of the data to show not only that historical evidence supports a strategic allocation to international equity, but that the typical U.S. pension plan is underexposed.

An Industrial Organization Approach to International Portfolio Diversification
An Industrial Organization Approach to International Portfolio Diversification

Author: Chaehee Shin

Publisher:

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Although the lack of international portfolio diversification has long interested the financial economics literature, the role of financial intermediaries in the market for diversified portfolios has rarely been studied. In this paper, I introduce a microeconomic aspect of under-diversification by examining a new data on U.S.-based mutual fund families' global diversification. I document the fund families' investments in global equity markets and explore features of supply and demand in the mutual fund market to explain their limited global diversification. Demand estimation confirms that consumers are not only sensitive to the fund families' portfolio characteristics such as global diversification, but also to the non-portfolio characteristics such as fund family age and size. On the supply side, the model of fund families' global investment decisions uses a revealed preference approach and shows small cross-border investment frictions can justify the fund families' observed limited global diversification. Other factors such as destination country's investor protection level and fund family's investment experience significantly affect the degree of diversification as well.