Long-term international diversification of equities

Equity investors exhibit home bias although they can reduce risk with diversified global portfolios. We studied 118 years of data for 21 developed markets to investigate international diversification benefits for long-horizon equity investors. Investing equal proportions in all the markets would have increased Sharpe ratios only for investors in countries with low domestic ratios. Optimal global portfolios would have significantly increased Sharpe ratios for investors in all the countries. Allocating equal proportions to five optimal countries would have provided most of the maximum potential benefits of international diversification. Investors in countries with lower domestic Sharpe ratios would have benefited more from international diversification, primarily through risk reduction.     

The benefits from international diversification for Nordic investors

In this paper, we investigate the magnitude of the benefits from international diversification from the Nordic point of view. Special attention is paid to whether potentially increased co-movement of stock markets together with more volatile Nordic currencies have resulted in decreased benefits from international diversification towards the end of the 1980s. Moreover, the paper presents evidence on the benefits from international diversification for a currency which has recently started its free float, the Finnish markka (FIM). We find significant increases in stock market co-movement. Both unhedged ex ante strategies as well as strategies hedged for exchange rate risk are investigated, revealing substantial benefits from international diversification for the Nordic countries. However, we obtain mixed results concerning the question of the optimality of hedging.     

Corporate international diversification and risk

This study analyzes the effects of corporate international diversification (CID) on risk. Results document a mostly positive relation between CID, as measured by four different empirical proxy variables, and equity risk. I also find that diversification increases the volatility of cash flows and earnings. There is no empirical support of a reduction in correlations between firm-level and domestic market-level cash flows of internationally diversified firms. Finally, this study shows that the risk-increasing effects of CID are stronger for firms that are in more advanced stages of the internationalization process. The latter finding would be consistent with firms expanding to more risky countries in their latter stages of CID.     

Excess returns and international diversification: The Scandinavian view

The paper discusses excess returns within four Scandinavian stock markets and also how Scandinavian returns are related to the returns in non-Scandinavian markets. Some underlying reasons for the observed economically weak relationships between markets are reviewed. Moreover, some reasons why the interrelationships between markets can be expected to increase in the future are provided.     

A nineties perspective on international diversification

Investors often look to international diversification as a means to reduce the risk of a stock portfolio while maintaining a given level of return. In this study we look at ten years of historical data from the stock markets in the G-7 countries. We see how diversification from an S & P 500 portfolio into a two-market (two-country) portfolio would have impacted the risk and return. Across this ten-year period, we find that a portfolio consisting solely of the S & P 500 dominates any portfolio that can be constructed from the S & P 500 and the major market index of the G-7 countries.     

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.     

Who benefits more from international diversification?

This paper investigates the relative magnitude of the international diversification benefits for the domestic investors in various countries. The constraints of short-sales, over-weighting investments, and investing region are considered. The empirical results suggest that local investors in the less developed countries, particularly in East Asia and Latin America, comparatively benefit more from both regional and global diversification. This finding holds even though the international market has become more integrated so that the diversification benefits have decreased over the past two decades. The results are useful for asset management professionals to determine target markets to promote the business of national/international funds.     

Homemade international diversification under economic policy uncertainty

We examine how US mutual funds that invest domestically make portfolio adjustments by incorporating US-listed foreign stocks (cross-listed stocks) when faced with US market economic policy uncertainty. We document a positive association between US economic policy uncertainty and US mutual funds’ weight of cross-listed stocks, and find that the effect is concentrated in funds that mainly invest in the US domestic market. The findings are not sensitive to the instrumental variable approach, model specification, sampling, variable definition, and controlling for macro characteristics. Funds with higher weight of cross-listed foreign stocks when US economic policy uncertainty increases outperform other funds, indicating the rationality of such an investment strategy. A long-short portfolio generates 3.4% annualized abnormal return in the immediate following quarter. Our study shields light not only on the international diversification benefit of US-listed foreign stocks but also on the importance of capital market openness for domestic investors.     

The persistence of international diversification benefits before and during the Asian crisis

This research examines whether international diversification benefits achieved in an initial portfolio-formation period continue to be realized in subsequent evaluation periods and in the face of a major market disturbance. A New Zealand-only (NZO) efficient frontier is used as a base investment from which “off-shore” unit trusts (UTs) are added. Off-shore UTs considered are from Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, and Great Britain. The analysis is conducted over a 6-year period that includes the recent “Asian crisis.” It is found that diversification reduced the impacts of the crisis, and that the traditional, full-covariance portfolio-formation model performed better than three simpler models.     

Time-varying international diversification and the forward premium

This paper reproduces the slope of the uncovered interest rate parity (UIP) regression for ten country pairs within one standard deviation under rational expectations. We propose an infinite horizon dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with incomplete markets. Heterogeneous investors experience varying risk aversion as a result of habit formation.The underlying mechanism of the model relies on varying international diversification in the investors' portfolio choice decision. In response to their changing habit levels, investors' hedging desire varies over time. This leads to adjustments in interest rates. The habit-induced investment decisions are negatively correlated with movements in the exchange rate. This results in a negative correlation between interest rates and expected exchange rates, as implied by a negative UIP slope.Depending on the magnitude of habits, the model is capable of reproducing positive as well as negative UIP slopes, as seen empirically in the data.     

An empirical examination of the benefits of international diversification

We examine the benefits of international portfolio diversification for U.K. investors between January 1985 and December 2000 using the approach of Wang [Wang, Z., 1998. Efficiency loss and constraints on portfolio holdings. Journal of Financial Economics 48, 359–375] and Li et al. [Li, K., Sarkar, A., Wang, Z., 2003. Diversification benefits of emerging markets subject to portfolio constraints. Journal of Empirical Finance 10, 57–80]. We find significant increases in the Sharpe [Sharpe, W.F., 1966. Mutual fund performance. Journal of Business 39, 119–138] and certainty equivalent return (CER) performance in moving from a domestic strategy to an international strategy that includes either global industry or country equity portfolios, even in the presence of short selling restrictions. We also find significant diversification benefits using U.K. unit trusts with international equity objectives. However, U.K. international unit trusts do not capture all the diversification benefits provided by either global industry or country equity portfolios.     

Suboptimal international equity portfolio diversification and stock market development

Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting - This paper examines whether the widely reported phenomena of home and foreign biases (i.e. suboptimal international equity portfolio diversification)...     

Financial education,investor protection and international portfolio diversification

This paper investigates the effect of financial education on foreign portfolio investment. We show that higher investor financial education fosters international diversification, and that its role is particularly pronounced where information problems and monitoring costs are likely to be more severe, that is, in countries where protection of minority shareholders' rights is weaker.We interpret this evidence as supportive of the conjecture that financial education lessens the informational constraints binding foreign investors.     

Systematic risk and international diversification: An empirical perspective

This paper reports findings from a study that systematically evaluated the nature of the relationship between internationalization and systematic risk. In addition to previous conceptualizations, this study also examined whether the number of foreign countries and segments a firm operates in constitute a part of the information used by market participants to assess a firm's risk exposure. We find that international diversification is significantly and positively associated with systematic risk and that diversification augments systematic risk. Our findings have implications on the stability of foreign expansion and business decisions by managers on the appropriate level of overseas commitment.     

我国证券市场应适时推出国际板

2009年4月国务院发布<国务院关于推进上海加快发展现代服务业和先进制造业、建设国际金融中心和国际航运中心的意见>,将上海证券交易所国际板的推出提上议程.促进上海证券交易所的国际化,成为上海建设国际金融中心的重要内容.本文分析归纳了我国已经基本具备推出国际板的条件,对推出国际板的利弊进行了简要分析,提出加快推出国际板的对策性建议.     

Exploring the benefits of international government bond portfolio diversification strategies

We use the Bayesian approach of Wang (1998) to examine the diversification benefits of investing in international government bonds. We find that no short-selling constraints substantially reduce but do not eliminate the diversification benefits when only investing in G7 government bonds with different maturities. There are significant diversification benefits when using the G7 bonds, an inflation-linked bond index, and emerging market bonds even in the presence of no short-selling constraints. The superior performance is driven by the emerging markets bonds. We also find that the diversification benefits vary across different economic states.     

Exploring the diversification benefits of US international equity closed-end funds

Financial Markets and Portfolio Management - I use the simulation approach of Jobson and Korkie (J Portfolio Manag 7:70–74, 1981), combined with Michaud optimization (Michaud and Michaud,...     

Market segmentation and international diversification across country and industry portfolios

We conjecture that partially segmented stock indexes that are characterized by low correlation with the world market are mainly priced by local factors and should produce abnormal returns relative to a global asset-pricing model. This implies a negative relation between correlation and future index returns in the presence of segmented indexes. Empirical evidence confirms such a relationship for the sample of industry indexes, suggesting a heterogeneous segmentation. However, we do not observe a similar pattern for country indexes. In addition, the international diversification potential of industries does not vanish during volatile periods. The hypothesis that the negative relationship should be stronger for the more segmented subsamples that are characterized by small market size and emerging country origin is verified for the industry sample. Thus, cross-industry diversification is superior to mere cross-country diversification.     

On the robustness of international portfolio diversification benefits to regime-switching volatility

We examine if the benefits of international portfolio diversification are robust to time-varying asset return volatility. Since diversified portfolios are subject to common cross-country shocks, we focus on the transmission mechanism of such shocks in the presence of regime-switching volatility. Generally, market linkages are stable with little evidence of increased market interdependence in turbulent periods. Furthermore, risk reduction is consistently delivered for the US investor who holds foreign equity.     

Benefits of international diversification with investment constraints: An over-time perspective

This paper investigates the benefits and asset allocation of the optimal international diversification for the U.S.A. investor while considering various portfolio constraints. Although the global financial market is becoming more integrated, the findings suggest that adding lower and upper weighting bounds reduces, but does not completely eliminate, the potential economic value of international investment. The addition of investment constraints makes asset allocation more feasible and decreases the volatility in portfolio return. The time-variation in the optimal asset allocation implies that fund managers should rebalance international portfolios dynamically. The out-of-sample test suggests that the Markowitz model with constraints realizes trivial improvement in mean-variance efficiency but still demonstrates significant reduction in risk.