We propose a cross-sectional time-series model to assess the impact of market liberalizations in emerging equity markets on the cost of capital, volatility, beta, and correlation with world market returns. Liberalizations are defined by regulatory changes, the introduction of depositary receipts and country funds, and structural breaks in equity capital f lows to the emerging markets. We control for other economic events that might confound the impact of foreign speculators on local equity markets. Across a range of specifications, the cost of capital always decreases after a capital market liberalization with the effect varying between 5 and 75 basis points. THROUGHOUT HISTORY AND IN MANY MARKET ECONOMIES, the speculator has been characterized as both a villain and a savior. Indeed, the reputation of the speculator generally depends on the country where he does business. In wellfunctioning advanced capital markets, such as the United States, the speculator is viewed as an integral par...

Domestic investors hold a substantially larger proportion of their wealth portfolios in domestic assets than standard portfolio theory would suggest, a phenomenon called "equity home bias. " In the absence of this bias, investors would optimally diversify domestic output risk using foreign equities. Therefore, consumption growth rates would tend to comove across countries even when output growth rates do not. Empirically, however, consumption growth rates tend to have a lower correlation across countries than do output growth rates, a phenomenon I call "consumption home bias. " In this paper, I discuss these two biases and their potential relationship. I appreciate useful suggestions and comments from three anonymous referees and John Pencavel, the editor. I am also grateful to Michael Adler, Urban Jermann, and Amir Yaron for helpful discussions. Any errors or omissions are my responsibility alone. 1 Do individuals hold the optimal portfolio? Do they do a good job of hedging risks? The answer to these questions are clearly important for understanding the economy. If individuals indeed hedge risk optimally, then resources are allocated to their most efficient uses. If not, then many other questions arise. Why not? What is the explanation for these inefficiencies? And what

The strong bias in favor of domestic securities is a well-documented characteristic of international investment portfolios, yet we show that the preference for investing close to home also applies to portfolios of domestic stocks. Specifically, U.S. investment managers exhibit a strong preference for locally headquartered firms, particularly small, highly levered firms that produce nontraded goods. These results suggest that asymmetric information between local and nonlocal investors may drive the preference for geographically proximate investments, and the relation between investment proximity and firm size and leverage may shed light on several well-documented asset pricing anomalies. THE STRONG PREFERENCE FOR DOMESTIC EQUITIES exhibited by investors in international markets, despite the well-documented gains from international diversification, 1 remains an important yet unresolved empirical puzzle in financial economics. As French and Poterba ~1991! document, U.S. equity

Individual investors who hold common stocks directly pay a tremendous performance penalty for active trading. Of 66,465 households with accounts at a large discount broker during 1991 to 1996, those that trade most earn an annual return of 11.4 percent, while the market returns 17.9 percent. The average household earns an annual return of 16.4 percent, tilts its common stock investment toward high-beta, small, value stocks, and turns over 75 percent of its portfolio annually. Overconfidence can explain high trading levels and the resulting poor performance of individual investors. Our central message is that trading is hazardous to your wealth. The investor’s chief problem—and even his worst enemy—is likely to be himself. Benjamin Graham In 1996, approximately 47 percent of equity investments in the United States were held directly by households, 23 percent by pension funds, and 14 percent by mutual funds ~Securities Industry Fact Book, 1997!. Financial economists have extensively analyzed the return performance of equities managed by mutual funds. There is also a fair amount of research on the performance of equities managed by pension funds. Unfortunately, there is little research on the return performance of equities held directly by households, despite their large ownership of equities.

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and Jason Zweig for useful conversations and to Lipper Analytical Services for data on Texas municipal bond funds. Familiarity Breeds Investment by

We explore a new panel data set on bilateral gross cross-border equity flows between 14 countries, 1989-96. We show that a “gravity ” model explains international transactions in financial assets at least as well as goods trade transactions. Gross transaction flows depend on market size in both source and destination country as well as trading costs, in which both information and the transaction technology play a role. Distance proxies some information costs, and other variables explicitly represent information transmission, an information asymmetry between domestic and foreign investors, and the efficiency of transactions. The remarkably good results have strong implications for theories of asset trade. We find that the geography of information is the main determinant of the pattern of international transactions, while there is weak support in our data for the diversification motive, once we control for the informational friction. We strengthen our conclusions by investigating- in another data set- the ability of our information variables to explain transactions in classes of assets with different informational content (corporate bonds, equities and government bonds). Finally, we broaden the scope of our results by presenting some evidence linking the results on equity transactions to equity holdings.

This paper provides an analysis of the impact of international portfolio flows on security returns. It concludes that opening a country to portfolio flows decreases its cost of capital without adverse effects on its securities markets. There is no convincing evidence that portfolio flows increase the volatility of equity returns or lead to excessive comovement of a country's equity returns with world equity returns. Though there has been much concern that portfolio flows create contagion effects, existing empirical evidence does not provide conclusive evidence that contagion due to uninformed investors is economically important. See Feldstein and Horioka (1980). 1 The 1996 numbers are obtained from World Bank (1997). 2 1 For most of the period following World War II, the economic significance of net capital flows wa s small. Further, net portfolio flows were even l ess important. Over recent years, net capital flows have become 1 much larger, especially towards developing econom...

: We aim to provide insight into the observed equity home bias phenomenon by analyzing the determinants of U.S. holdings of equities across a wide range of countries. In particular, we explore the role of information costs in determining the country distribution of U.S. investors' equity holdings using a comprehensive new data set on U.S. ownership of foreign stocks. We find that U.S. holdings of a country's equities are positively related to the share of that country's stock market that is listed on U.S. exchanges, even after controlling for capital controls, trade links, transaction costs, and historical risk-adjusted returns. We attribute this finding to the fact that foreign firms that list on U.S. exchanges are obliged to provide standardized, credible financial information, thereby reducing information costs incurred by U.S. investors. This obligation stems from U.S. investor protection regulations, which include stringent disclosure requirements, reconciliation of financial stat...

At the end of 1997, the foreign companies listed in the U.S. have a Tobin’s q ratio that exceeds by 16.5 % the q ratio of firms from the same country that are not listed in the U.S. The valuation difference is statistically significant and largest for exchange-listed firms, where it reaches 37%. The difference persists even after controlling for a number of firm and country characteristics. We propose a theory that explains this valuation difference. We hypothesize that controlling shareholders of firms listed in the U.S. cannot extract as many private benefits from control compared to controlling shareholders of firms not listed in the U.S., but that their firms are better able to take advantage of growth opportunities. Consequently, the cross-listed firms should be those firms where the interests of the controlling shareholder are better aligned with the interests of other shareholders. The growth opportunities of cross-listed firms will be more highly valued than those of firms not listed in the U.S. both because cross-listed firms are better able to take advantage of these opportunities and because a smaller fraction of the cash flow of these firms is expropriated by controlling shareholders. We find that our theory explains the greater valuation of cross-listed firms. In particular, we find expected sales growth is valued more highly for firms listed in the U.S. and that this effect is greater for firms from countries with poorer investor rights. 1.