We examine the relative importance of country, industry, world market and currency risk factors for international stock returns. Our approach focuses on testing the mean-variance efficiency of the various factor portfolios. An unconditional analysis does not show significant differences between...

I show that more comprehensive corporate disclosure reduces investors’ uncertainty about domestic companies’ payoffs at no cost, thereby decreasing investors’ equity home bias toward a country. Since investors should base their investment decisions on valid and easily interpretable company...

This paper empirically investigates international equity investors' foreign portfolios before and during the financial crisis by estimating a gravity model for 22 source and 42 destination countries during 2001–2009. The results show a significant negative relationship between foreign equity...

We examine the familiarity hypothesis of home bias by studying how foreign ownership of Swedish firms is affected by the mandatory adoption of IFRS. We decompose foreign investors into institutional and non-institutional investors. Foreign investors are further decomposed into EU (IFRS adopting...

This paper analyzes diversification benefits from international securitized real estate in a mixed-asset context. We apply regression-based mean-variance efficiency tests, conditional on currency-unhedged and fully hedged portfolios to account for systematic foreign exchange movements. From the...

This paper develops a model of exchange rate dynamics that takes into account positions in foreign and domestic equities in addition to “standard” short-term riskless securities. The modeling of cross-country stock holdings is motivated by evidence that a large and ever-increasing proportion...

This paper studies the international transmission of pledgeability shocks, as the recent crisis involved a negative shock to the pledgeability of assets. The paper develops a two-country portfolio model, with leveraged investors, that incorporates this type of shock and a solution approach for...

This paper argues that a stable broad money demand for the euro area over the period 1980–2011 can be obtained by modelling cross border international portfolio allocation. As a consequence, model-based excess liquidity measures, namely the difference between actual M3 growth (net of the...

In this paper we present an analysis of diversification strategies on portfolios of European corporate bonds. From the perspective of a US-based investor we study whether mean–variance diversification strategies change as a result of the introduction of the European Economic and Monetary Union...

Do country-specific equity market characteristics explain variations in foreign equity portfolio allocation? We study this question using comprehensive foreign equity portfolio holdings data and different measures of country-specific equity market factors for 36 host countries. Employing panel...