This paper demonstrates that, after integration, equity portfolios of countries that joined the European Monetary Union have converged at faster rate than those of NON EMU countries. This outcome canbe interpreted as a combination of the convergence of inflation rates and the convergence of...

Non professional investors display a much higher degree of home bias than fiancial investors suggesting that they might be more severely a¤ected by information asymmetry issues. In particular, non professional investors, having less easily access to information on foreign firm-specific...

This paper presents empirical evidence on the increasing allocation of institutional investors to emerging markets economies. It seeks to understand which factors are driving this increase, and how this relates to portfolio flows to such economies. By making use of the Emerging Portfolio Fund...

The question of whether foreign investments should be systematically hedged against currency risk has not been clearly answered to date. Numerous theoretical and empirical studies have provided contradictory conclusions. This paper examines to what extent foreign bonds and equities are exposed...

Evidence indicates that people fear change and the unknown. We offer a model of familiarity bias in which individuals focus on adverse scenarios in evaluating defections from the status quo. The model explains the endowment effect, portfolio underdiversification, home and local biases....

We investigate the role of information asymmetries and inflation hedging in shaping international equity portfolios. We confirm, in a multinational setting, Cooper and Kaplanis (1994) result of no inflation hedging motive driving investors' behavior and find evidence of a crucial role for...

This paper investigates the diversification prospects which may be reaped when investing in a mixture of emerging and developed market assets. Given that emerging markets are somewhat distinct from developed ones, one may expect significant diversification potential and therefore risk reduction....

Abstract Purpose – Natural disasters may inflict significant damage upon international financial markets. The purpose of this study is to investigate if any contagion effect occurred in the immediate aftermath of the Japanese earthquake, tsunami and subsequent nuclear crisis....

Financial integration among economies has the benefit of improving allocative efficiency and diversifying risk. However the recent global financial crisis, considered as the worst since the Great Depression has re-ignited the fierce debate about the merits of financial globalization and its...