Long-Term Global Market Correlations

The correlation structure of the world equity markets varies considerably over the past 150 years. We show that correlations were high during periods of economic and financial integration. We decompose the benefits of international diversification into two parts: a component that measures variation of the average correlation across markets, and a component that measures variation of the investment opportunity set. Globalization is associated with relatively high correlations, and an increase in the investment opportunity set. From this, we infer that periods of globalization have both benefits and drawbacks for international investors