Pension systems often entail some compulsory saving over which individuals have some degree of choice in terms of the pension plan in which to invest. Our contribution analyses whether the choice between alternative plans is affected by the presence of liquidity constraints during working life....

In the wake of monetary unification euro area bond and equitymarkets have become increasingly integrated. As an evidence of integration in those markets, the volume of international financial asset trading increased considerably. Nevertheless, the substantial decline in home bias among the...

Following the launch of the Euro in 1999, integration among Euro area financial markets increased considerably. As a result, portfolio home bias declined across the European financial markets. However, greater market integration has generated a new bias: portfolio Euro bias, a situation where...

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...

The shift of perspective from a national basis to a Euro area basis, inevitably induced by EMU, has led member countries to a parallel shift from equity home bias to equity Euro bias. We interpret this evidence by means of a standard mean-variance portfolio selection model modified in order to...

Starting from the constraints and incentives that cause countries to issue debt in foreign currency, this paper provides an overview of policy approaches for choosing the optimal currency structure of sovereign foreign-currency debt. The objective of sovereign debt managers generally includes...

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 presence of Granger-causality amongst world market indices: S&P 500, Dow Jones Industrial Average, Eurostoxx 50, Nikkei, FTSE 100, from January 2nd 1987 to October 17th 2008. Using daily market returns I performed a Granger-causality test, based on the Vector...

The objective of this study is to identify the thematic areas for cooperation among the Muslim countries in the field of portfolio investment. The study covers the investment principles of return maximization, risk minimization and diversification. The core area of the study is to explore the...

This article investigates international stock market integration in four major developed economies, namely the United States, the Economic and Monetary Union of the European Union, Japan and the United Kingdom, and two Asian emerging, countries namely China and India, over the period from June...