We aim to provide insight into the observed equity home bias phenomenon by analyzing the determinants of U.S. holdings of equities across a wide range of countries. In particular, we explore the role of information costs in determining the country distribution of U.S. investors' equity holdings...

This paper analyses the general equilibrium effects on asset valuation and capital accumulation of an exogenous drop in the rate of return required by investors in a model of production with imperfectly competitive product markets. The model improves substantially on the standard perfectly...

This paper compares the predictions for the market value of firms from the Gordon growth model with those from a dynamic general equilibrium model of production. The predictions for movements in the market value of firms in response to a decline in the required return or an increase in the...

This paper is the first to investigate the importance of geography in explaining equity market participation. We provide evidence to support two distinct local area effects. The first is a community ownership effect, that is, individuals are influenced by the investment behavior of members of...

Few economists or laymen would deny that political events can have an important, sometimes even overwhelming, impact on economic decisions in general, and investment decisions in particular. The first goal of this paper was to integrate a number of political and non-traditional economic...

This paper uses a sample of 4,410 firms from 29 countries to investigate the relation between corporate governance and the shareholder base. In contrast to previous work, our results strongly support the notion that poor corporate governance, at both the firm and country level, negatively...

We study the response of investment to changes in uncertainty about future profits. We find that in industries dominated by small firms, an increase in uncertainty about future profits depresses investment; in all other industries, increased uncertainty has virtually no effect (or has a positive...

We analyze a unique data set and uncover a remarkable result that casts a new light on the home bias phenomenon. The data are comprehensive, security-level holdings of emerging market equities by U.S. investors. We document, as expected, that at a point in time U.S. portfolios are tilted towards...

This paper investigates the underlying determinants of home bias using a comprehensive sample of U.S. investor holdings of foreign stocks. We document that U.S. cross-listings are economically important, as U.S. ownership in a foreign firm roughly doubles upon cross-listing in the United States....

Since 2001, foreign investors have acquired roughly $5 trillion in U.S. securities--more than doubling their holdings of U.S. equities and bonds--as both official and private inflows have financed record U.S. current account deficits. Although the rapid growth of foreign holdings of U.S....