We explore the link between international stock market comovement and the degree to which firms operate globally. Using stock returns and balance sheet data for companies in 20 countries, we estimate a factor model that decomposes stock returns into global, country-specific and industry-specific...

A plot of expected returns versus betas obeys virtually no relation to an inefficient index portfolio's mean-variance location. If the index portfolio is inefficient, then the coefficients and R- squared from an ordinary-least-squares regression of expected returns on betas can equal essentially...