In this paper, I explore the determinants of foreign bias in international portfolio investment focusing on a behavioral explanation. Specifically, I investigate whether investors having a stronger uncertainty aversion perceive a foreign country to be more unfamiliar than those with less such...

We study the impact of the COVID-19 shock on the portfolio exposures of euro area investors. The analysis “looks-through” holdings of investment fund shares to first gauge euro area investors' full exposures to global debt securities and listed shares by sector at end-2019 and to...

We investigate US households' direct investment in stocks, bonds and liquid accounts and their foreign counterparts, in order to identify the different participation hurdles affecting asset investment domestically and overseas. To this end, we estimate a trivariate probit model with three...

Anecdotal evidence suggests that investor protection affects the demand for equity, but existing theories emphasize only the effect of investor protection on the supply of equity. We build a model showing that the demand for equity is important in explaining financial development. If the level...

We examine how emerging market (EM) investors allocate their stock portfolios internationally. Using both country-level and institution-level data, we find that the coming wave of EM investors systematically over- and under-weight their holdings in some target countries. These abnormal foreign...

In the last decade, the Foreign Institutional Investor (FII) flows have increased almost twenty times and attained shares of thirteen and six percent in the National Stock Exchange and Bombay Stock Exchanges respectively in the cash segment of the Indian equity market. This raises the issue of...

This paper examines institutions' portfolio allocation and performance in US securities. We test how information immobility, proxied by market correlation and cultural and geographical distance between the investors' home markets and the US, influences portfolio strategies. Consistent with...

This paper examines foreign institutional investors' portfolio allocation and performance in U.S. securities. We test how information immobility, proxied by cultural and geographical distance between the investors' home markets and the U.S., influences portfolio strategies. Consistent with...

The Foreign and Colonial Investment Trust is the oldest surviving closed end fund, having been established in 1868. Its early success and emulation were related to its identification of a missing market - the provision of a wholesale diversified vehicle for the investing public. This paper is a...