IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jimfin/v27y2008i7p1122-1134.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Diversification in euro area stock markets: Country versus industry

Author

Listed:
  • Moerman, Gerard A.

Abstract

The harmonization of fiscal and economic policy within the European Monetary Union (EMU) has had a considerable impact on the economies of member countries. In particular, several studies indicate that the proceeding economic integration among euro area countries has important consequences for the factors driving asset returns in financial markets. However, these studies rely on one specific methodology [Heston, S.L., Rouwenhorst, K.G., 1994. Does industrial structure explain the benefits of international diversification? Journal of Financial Economics 36, 3-27; Heston, S.L., Rouwenhorst, K.G., 1995. Industry and country effects in international stock returns. Journal of Portfolio Management Spring, 53-58], that has recently been criticized as too restrictive. This study adopts a mean-variance approach instead. Using recent euro area stock markets data, we find strong evidence that diversification over industries yields more efficient portfolios than diversification over countries.

Suggested Citation

  • Moerman, Gerard A., 2008. "Diversification in euro area stock markets: Country versus industry," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 27(7), pages 1122-1134, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jimfin:v:27:y:2008:i:7:p:1122-1134
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261-5606(08)00085-5
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Brooks, Robin & Del Negro, Marco, 2004. "The rise in comovement across national stock markets: market integration or IT bubble?," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 11(5), pages 659-680, December.
    2. Kpate ADJAOUTÉ, & Jean-Pierre DANTHINE, 2000. "EMU and Portfolio Diversification Opportunities," FAME Research Paper Series rp31, International Center for Financial Asset Management and Engineering.
    3. Kpate Adjaoute & Jean-Pierre Danthine, 2004. "Portfolio diversification: alive and well in Euro-land!," Applied Financial Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 14(17), pages 1225-1231.
    4. Gikas A. Hardouvelis & Dimitrios Malliaropulos & Richard Priestley, 2006. "EMU and European Stock Market Integration," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 79(1), pages 365-392, January.
    5. Dusan Isakov & Frédéric Sonney, 2004. "Are Practitioners Right? On the Relative Importance of Industrial Factors in International Stock Returns," Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics (SJES), Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics (SSES), vol. 140(III), pages 355-379, September.
    6. Flavin, Thomas J., 2004. "The effect of the Euro on country versus industry portfolio diversification," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 23(7-8), pages 1137-1158.
    7. Harry Markowitz, 1952. "Portfolio Selection," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 7(1), pages 77-91, March.
    8. Griffin, John M. & Andrew Karolyi, G., 1998. "Another look at the role of the industrial structure of markets for international diversification strategies," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(3), pages 351-373, December.
    9. Roll, Richard, 1992. " Industrial Structure and the Comparative Behavior of International Stock Market Indices," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 47(1), pages 3-41, March.
    10. Francesca Carrieri & Vihang Errunza & Sergei Sarkissian, 2004. "Industry Risk and Market Integration," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 50(2), pages 207-221, February.
    11. Paul EHLING & Sofia B. RAMOS, 2003. "Geographical versus Industrial Diversification: A Mean Variance Spanning Approach," FAME Research Paper Series rp80, International Center for Financial Asset Management and Engineering.
    12. Heston, Steven L. & Rouwenhorst, K. Geert, 1994. "Does industrial structure explain the benefits of international diversification?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 36(1), pages 3-27, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jimfin:v:27:y:2008:i:7:p:1122-1134. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Dana Niculescu). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/30443 .

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.