IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0288250.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Home bias and local equity portfolio decisions of Chinese insurance institutional investors

Author

Listed:
  • Shanshan Yang
  • Na He
  • Haizong Yu

Abstract

Our paper explores whether Chinese insurance companies exhibit a local preference in deciding their equity portfolios and the incentive of this preference. Our research finds that Chinese insurance institutional investors significantly tilt to invest in local firms geographically close to them, and local investments do not significantly outperform non-local investments. The results indicate that the behavioral aspect of home bias, rather than information advantage, play a more significant role in deciding equity holdings of China’s insurance companies. Additionally, local equity preference is more pronounced in dialect-segmented areas and life insurance firms. This paper incorporates hometown identification into the analysis framework of insurance companies’ portfolio decision-making and enriches the research of their investing strategies from the perspective of behavioral finance.

Suggested Citation

  • Shanshan Yang & Na He & Haizong Yu, 2023. "Home bias and local equity portfolio decisions of Chinese insurance institutional investors," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 18(7), pages 1-17, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0288250
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0288250
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0288250
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0288250&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0288250?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Zoran Ivković & Scott Weisbenner, 2005. "Local Does as Local Is: Information Content of the Geography of Individual Investors' Common Stock Investments," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 60(1), pages 267-306, February.
    2. French, Kenneth R & Poterba, James M, 1991. "Investor Diversification and International Equity Markets," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(2), pages 222-226, May.
    3. Hasan, Iftekhar & Simaan, Yusif, 2000. "A rational explanation for home country bias," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 19(3), pages 331-361, June.
    4. Mark S. Seasholes & Ning Zhu, 2010. "Individual Investors and Local Bias," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 65(5), pages 1987-2010, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. David Vidal-Tomás & Simone Alfarano, 2020. "An agent-based early warning indicator for financial market instability," Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination, Springer;Society for Economic Science with Heterogeneous Interacting Agents, vol. 15(1), pages 49-87, January.
    2. Suin Lee & Christos Pantzalis & Jung Chul Park, 2024. "Interstate migration networks and stock return comovement," Journal of Financial Research, Southern Finance Association;Southwestern Finance Association, vol. 47(1), pages 89-121, March.
    3. Mishra, Anil V., 2015. "Measures of equity home bias puzzle," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 293-312.
    4. Christina Guenther & Sofia Johan & Denis Schweizer, 2018. "Is the crowd sensitive to distance?—how investment decisions differ by investor type," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 50(2), pages 289-305, February.
    5. Green, T. Clifton & Jame, Russell, 2013. "Company name fluency, investor recognition, and firm value," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 109(3), pages 813-834.
    6. Graeme G. Acheson & Gareth Campbell & Áine Gallagher & John D. Turner, 2021. "Independent women: investing in British railways, 1870–1922," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 74(2), pages 471-495, May.
    7. Bruno Solnik & Luo Zuo, 2012. "A Global Equilibrium Asset Pricing Model with Home Preference," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 58(2), pages 273-292, February.
    8. Hamberg, Mattias & Mavruk, Taylan & Sjögren, Stefan, 2013. "Investment allocation decisions, home bias and the mandatory IFRS adoption," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 107-130.
    9. Martijn Boermans & Ian Cooper & Piet Sercu & Rosanne Vanpée, 2022. "Foreign bias in equity portfolios: Informational advantage or familiarity bias?," Working Papers 742, DNB.
    10. Ariadna Dumitrescu & Javier Gil-Bazo, 2015. "Familiarity and competition: the case of mutual funds," Economics Working Papers 1474, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
    11. McQueen, Grant & Stenkrona, Anders, 2012. "The home-institution bias," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 36(6), pages 1627-1638.
    12. Li, Xuan, 2023. "Home bias in shareholder voting," Discussion Papers 2023/21, Norwegian School of Economics, Department of Business and Management Science.
    13. Quan, Yi & Zhang, Wenlan, 2021. "Geographic distance and board monitoring: Evidence from the relocation of independent directors," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 66(C).
    14. Eduard Gaar & David Scherer & Dirk Schiereck, 2022. "The home bias and the local bias: A survey," Management Review Quarterly, Springer, vol. 72(1), pages 21-57, February.
    15. Jess N. Cornaggia & Kimberly J. Cornaggia & Ryan D. Israelsen, 2020. "Where the Heart Is: Information Production and the Home Bias," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(12), pages 5532-5557, December.
    16. Branikas, Ioannis & Hong, Harrison & Xu, Jiangmin, 2020. "Location choice, portfolio choice," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 138(1), pages 74-94.
    17. Wu, Qinqin & Hao, Ying & Lu, Jing, 2018. "Air pollution, stock returns, and trading activities in China," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 342-365.
    18. Berry, Thomas & Gamble, Keith Jacks, 2013. "Informed local trading prior to earnings announcements," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 16(3), pages 505-525.
    19. David C. Ling & Andy Naranjo & Benjamin Scheick, 2021. "There is no place like home: Information asymmetries, local asset concentration, and portfolio returns," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 49(1), pages 36-74, March.
    20. Maxime MERLI & Antoine PARENT, 2022. "Portfolio Diversification During the Belle Époque: When the Actual Portfolios of French Individual Investors Met Behavioral Finance," Working Papers of LaRGE Research Center 2022-01, Laboratoire de Recherche en Gestion et Economie (LaRGE), Université de Strasbourg.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:plo:pone00:0288250. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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 bibliographic 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.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.