An international portfolio allows simultaneous investment in both domestic and foreign markets. It hence has the potential for improved performance by exploiting a wider range of returns, and diversification benefits, than portfolios investing in a single country. However, to obtain the most...

We develop a dynamic general-equilibrium framework with multiple households and multiple risky assets to explain how less- and more-sophisticated households differ in their portfolio and wealth dynamics. Differences in sophistication are modeled via heterogeneous confidence about asset returns,...

We introduce a portfolio friction in a two-country DSGE model where investors face a constant probability to make new portfolio decisions. The friction leads to a more gradual portfolio adjustment to shocks and a weaker portfolio response to changes in expected excess returns. We apply the model...

This paper examines the patterns of intraday cojumps between international equity markets as well as their impact on international asset holdings and portfolio diversification benefits. Using intraday index-based data for exchange-traded funds as proxies for international equity markets, we...

We review the international finance literature to assess the extent to which international factors affect financial asset demands and prices. International asset-pricing models with mean-variance investors predict that an asset's risk premium depends on its covariance with the world market...

The weak empirical evidence linking diversification and international equity flows calls into question the diversification paradigm at the international level and the analytical framework it implies. Using a novel measure of diversification that includes all the moments of the distribution of...

Using data from the April 2005 Survey of Consumers, we develop an index of investor sophistication from a set of 14 quiz-like questions. We correlate our measure of sophistication with holdings of international investments, measures of diversification, and holdings of an employer's stock. We...

The aim of this paper is to investigate the behavior of international equity returns and correlations using the discrete-time Markov-switching model and the impact of this behavior on international portfolio choices. We take the perspective of a US-based global investor who considers investment...

We use the Bayesian method introduced by Gallant and McCulloch (2009) to estimate consumption-based asset pricing models featuring smooth ambiguity preferences. We rely on semi-nonparametric estimation of a flexible auxiliary model in our structural estimation. Based on the market and aggregate...