Sources of gains from international portfolio diversification

This paper looks at the determinants of country and industry specific factors in international portfolio returns using a sample of forty eight countries and thirty nine industries over the last three decades. Country factors have remained relatively stable over the sample period while industry factors have significantly increased during the last decade and dropped again since 2000. The importance of industry and country factors is correlated with measures of economic and financial international integration and development. We find that financial market globalization is the main driving force behind the changes in relative magnitude of the different shocks. Country factors are smaller for countries integrated in world financial markets and have declined as the degree of financial integration and the number of countries pursuing financial liberalization has increased. Higher international financial integration within an industry increases the importance of industry factors in explaining returns. Economic integration of production also helps in explaining returns. Countries with a more specialized production activity have higher country shocks.     

国际权威机构2006资本投资预测

普华永道:2006年行业并购将提速 据普华永道Pw C交易服务部门(Transaction Services)称,随着企业和金融买家积极利用高现金水平、低利率和众多机遇,2006年行业合并将加剧.2004年由于企业努力降低成本并奠定收入基础,交易活动骤增;2005年,交易规模扩大,涉及美国企业交易的收益达8170亿美元,较2004年前3个季度的6540亿美元增长25%,而交易量依然保持稳定.     

The single family home in the investment portfolio

This article uses recent measures of the risk and return to investment in housing to estimate the effects of including a single family home in the investor portolio. We estimate the expected return and standard deviation of that return, as well as its correlation with other major investment classes.     

聚焦国际投资基金

普凯投资基金（Prax Capital） 成立于美国，是一家专注投资中国市场的私募股权投资基金，主要投资成长期／扩张期的制造业和服务业企业。公司对单个企业的投资额一般在1000万～3000万美元，投资周期通常为3～7年。     

A pedagogical note on Baumol's gain-confidence limit criterion for portfolio selection and the probability of ruin

The Baumol gain-confidence limit concept for selecting the set of efficient portfolios is commonly used, probably because of its intuitive relationships to the problem of ruin. This note shows the differences between Baumol's idea and the ruin constraint.     

Do ADRs enhance portfolio performance for a domestic portfolio? Evidence from the 1990s

American depository receipts (ADRs) represent an increasingly popular and convenient mechanism for international investing. We analyze ADRs traded throughout the 1990s and find that these securities offer a diversification and portfolio performance benefit when combined with a domestic portfolio (proxied by the S&P 500). While we find that emerging market ADRs are effective instruments for reducing portfolio risk, they do not improve portfolio performance as measured by the Sharpe ratio. Developed market ADRs do improve portfolio performance as measured by the Sharpe ratio. The asset allocation which maximizes the Sharpe ratio is 84 percent domestic stocks, 16 percent developed ADRs, and 0 percent emerging ADRs. Further, due to problems in defining an appropriate market index for ADRs, the Sharpe ratio is viewed to be the preferred performance measure. Other measures such as Jensen’s alpha and the Treynor measure are susceptible to being “gamed” to distort portfolio performance.     

The impact of international portfolio composition on consumption risk sharing

Recent empirical work has shown that ongoing international financial integration facilitates cross-country consumption risk sharing. These studies typically find that countries with high equity home bias exhibit relatively low international consumption risk sharing. We extend this line of research and demonstrate that it is not only a country's equity home bias that prevents consumption risk sharing. In addition, the composition of a country's foreign asset portfolio plays an important role. Using panel-data regression for a group of OECD countries over the period 1980–2007, we show that foreign investment bias has additional explanatory power for consumption risk sharing.     

Comments on Whaley's note

Valuation by duplication is a useful conceptual technique but it does not yield unique formula. Many duplicating portfolios, some simpler than the three security portfolio in Roll and Whaley, exist for this problem. Valuing the actual single security will generally yield conceptually and computationally simpler solutions.     

Confidentiality of student records: The professor's obligation

Recent Federal legislation has secured more firmly the rights of students to control the accumulation and dissemination of information about them. This situation would seem to compel professors to be more knowledgeable of student rights so as not to abuse them. This paper reviews the current status of student rights vis-a-vis their educational records and discusses a potential dilemma for the professor created by the legislation which established those rights. Knowledge of the law is particularly important to the accounting professor because his or her typically close liaison between the student and employment recruiter increases the risk of violation.     

从两个项目看投资保险国际合作

大型投资项目需要巨额资金,如何成功实现融资是关键,这个过程往往需要众多的放贷人聚在一起,共同为项目提供资金。对于某些海外项目,考虑到项目的特殊性和面临的风险,贷款人常常将投资保险（或称之为“政治风险保险”）列为放贷的前提条件。请看中国信保专家的分析     

Optimization,cointegration and diversification gains from international portfolios: an out-of-sample analysis

This study investigates comparative performance of iShares and their underlying market indices in a portfolio context from the perspective of U.S. investors. Two aspects are important. First, portfolios based on standard optimization procedures and a portfolio based on cointegration procedures are created and out-of-sample performance is compared. The portfolio utilizing cointegration inputs shows superior out-of-sample performance. Second, portfolio performance measurement is extended to different holding periods. The findings do not differ.     

Investor behaviour in response to Australia’s capital gains tax

We calibrate the effect of Australia’s Capital Gains Tax (CGT) on share prices and market activity. Based on a large sample drawn from all listed Australian companies for the years 1994–2007, we find significant tax‐loss selling (TLS) of shares that lost value over the financial year, which is reflected in unusually high trading volume and more sell orders in June and a rebound in July. There is some evidence that small mining stocks are particular targets for TLS. Interestingly, the 1999 CGT reforms, which introduced concessions for long‐term capital gains, did not reduce the incidence of TLS.     

Interest rate management in LDC's

The McKinnon argument that higher Time Deposit rates raise output and lower inflation in the short run and increase medium-term growth by raising the savings rate are shown to depered crucially on the assumption that portfolio shifts into TD's come out of an asset providing less intermediation than the banking system. We show that if instead the shift is out of an asset providing more intermediation (e.g., loans on a curbmarket), raising TD rates is contractionary in the short run, may have negative impacts on growth and can lead to more rather than less inflation in the short run.     

Knut wicksell's norm of price stabilization and Swedish monetary policy in the 1930's

This paper examines the conduct and the effects of Swedish monetary policy in the 1930's. Three major conclusions emerge from the study: (1) The conduct of monetary policy specifically the devaluation of the Swedish currency in 1931 and the subsequent program of price stabilization, had a major effect on the aggregative behavior of the Swedish economy in the 1930's. (2) The impact of the new fiscal policy was insignificant compared to the effects of monetary measures and international developments. (3) The framing of Swedish monetary policy in the 1930's was strongly influenced by Wicksell's norm of price stabilization and the recommendations of the old generation of monetary economists represented by Gustav Cassel and Eli Heckscher.     

Japan's fifth generation computer project

The Japanese Fifth Generation project is aimed at increasing computing power by around three orders of magnitude over 15 years. Motives are political and social as well as commercial. The Japanese have sought international cooperation in this attempt to beat IBM (in particular) by ignoring compatibility with existing systems. Although there is not even an embryonic Vth generation system yet, final success looks likely. One goal is to be able to process knowledge (rather than data), in a user-friendly manner.     

Combining equilibrium,resampling, and analyst’s views in portfolio optimization

This paper proposes the use of a portfolio optimization methodology which combines features of equilibrium models and investor’s views as in Black and Litterman (1992), and also deals with estimation risk as in Michaud (1998). In this way, our combined methodology is able to meet the needs of practitioners for stable and diversified portfolio allocations, while it is theoretically grounded on an equilibrium framework. We empirically test the methodology using a comprehensive sample of developed countries fixed income and equity indices, as well as sub-samples stratified by geographical region, time period, asset class and risk level. In general, our proposed combined methodology generates very competitive portfolios when compared to other methodologies, considering three evaluation dimensions: financial efficiency, diversification, and allocation stability. By generating financially efficient, stable, and diversified portfolio allocations, our methodology is suitable for long-term investors such as Central Banks and Sovereign Wealth Funds.     

Implied cost of capital investment strategies: evidence from international stock markets

Investors can generate excess returns by implementing trading strategies based on publicly available equity analyst forecasts. This paper captures the information provided by analysts by the implied cost of capital (ICC), the internal rate of return that equates a firm’s share price to the present value of analysts’ earnings forecasts. We find that U.S. stocks with a high ICC outperform low ICC stocks on average by 6.0 % per year. This spread is significant when controlling the investment returns for their risk exposure as proxied by standard pricing models. Further analysis across the world’s largest equity markets validates these results.     

A third sector approach to Sweden's future

The two development models summarized in this study are: Model “K” — export-led growth, aimed at goods-oriented production, public service expansion, real wage increases, high rate of employment, and industry: high technology for worldmarkets; and Model “A” — mobilization of work, by means of promotion of the informal economy, policies for unorthodox municipal problem-solving, service growth (by mixed formal or informal organization), and, for industry, less emphasis on expansion and exports, more on domestic consumer needs.     

中国农业对外投资面临哪些挑战

中国农业对外投资现状 2004年到2014年的10年间,中国对外投资的存量已经从8.34亿美元增长了11.6倍,流量则从2004年的2.89亿美元,增长到2014年的20.35亿美元,增长了七倍.当前,中国农业对外直接投资呈现出三方面的主要特征: 第一,农业对外投资仍处于初级阶段,投资规模比较小,由农业部农村经济研究中心投资监测的"走出去"的503个项目中,我们发现加工、物流、仓储及服务等一系列产业链中的关键环节都还没有建立起来.