IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/5166.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Why Is There a Home Bias? An Analysis of Foreign Portfolio Equity Ownership in Japan

Author

Listed:
  • Jun-Koo Kang
  • Rene M. Stulz

Abstract

This paper uses data on foreign stock ownership in Japan from 1975 to 1991 to examine the determinants of the home bias in portfolio holdings. Existing models of international portfolio choice predicting that foreign investors hold national market portfolios or portfolios tilted towards high expected return stocks are inconsistent with the evidence provided in this paper. We document that foreign investors overweight shares of firms in manufacturing industries, large firms, firms with good accounting performance, firms with low unsystematic risk, and firms with low leverage. Controlling for size, there is evidence that small firms that export more have greater foreign ownership. Foreign investors do not perform significantly worse than if they held the Japanese market portfolio, however. After controlling for firm size, there is no evidence that foreign ownership is related to expected returns of shares. We show that a model with size-based informational asymmetries and deadweight costs can yield asset allocations consistent with our evidence.

Suggested Citation

  • Jun-Koo Kang & Rene M. Stulz, 1995. "Why Is There a Home Bias? An Analysis of Foreign Portfolio Equity Ownership in Japan," NBER Working Papers 5166, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:5166
    Note: AP CF
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w5166.pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Fama, Eugene F & French, Kenneth R, 1992. "The Cross-Section of Expected Stock Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 47(2), pages 427-465, June.
    2. Kang, Jun-Koo & Kim, Yong-Cheol & Park, Kyung-Joo & Stulz, René M., 1995. "An Analysis of the Wealth Effects of Japanese Offshore Dollar-Denominated Convertible and Warrant Bond Issues," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 30(2), pages 257-270, June.
    3. Baxter, Marianne & Jermann, Urban J. & King, Robert G., 1998. "Nontraded goods, nontraded factors, and international non-diversification," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(2), pages 211-229, April.
    4. Dothan, Michael U & Feldman, David, 1986. "Equilibrium Interest Rates and Multiperiod Bonds in a Partially Observable Economy," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 41(2), pages 369-382, June.
    5. Gennotte, Gerard, 1986. "Optimal Portfolio Choice under Incomplete Information," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 41(3), pages 733-746, July.
    6. 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.
    7. Rudd, Andrew, 1977. "A note on qualitative results for investment proportions," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 5(2), pages 259-263, November.
    8. Tesar, Linda L. & Werner, Ingrid M., 1995. "Home bias and high turnover," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 14(4), pages 467-492, August.
    9. French, Kenneth R. & Poterba, James M., 1990. "Japanese and U.S. cross-border common stock investments," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 4(4), pages 476-493, December.
    10. Merton, Robert C, 1987. "A Simple Model of Capital Market Equilibrium with Incomplete Information," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 42(3), pages 483-510, July.
    11. Robert J. Shiller & Fumiko Kon-Ya & Yoshiro Tsutsui, 1991. "Speculative Behavior in the Stock Markets: Evidence from the United States and Japan," NBER Working Papers 3613, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Baxter, Marianne & Jermann, Urban J, 1997. "The International Diversification Puzzle Is Worse Than You Think," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 87(1), pages 170-180, March.
    13. Rene M. Stulz, 1994. "International Portfolio Choice and Asset Pricing: An Integrative Survey," NBER Working Papers 4645, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Fuller, Wayne A. & Battese, George E., 1974. "Estimation of linear models with crossed-error structure," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 2(1), pages 67-78, May.
    15. Williams, Joseph T., 1977. "Capital asset prices with heterogeneous beliefs," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 5(2), pages 219-239, November.
    16. Roll, Richard & Ross, Stephen A., 1977. "Comments on qualitative results for investment proportions," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 5(2), pages 265-268, November.
    17. Stulz, Rene M, 1981. "On the Effects of Barriers to International Investment," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 36(4), pages 923-934, September.
    18. Uppal, Raman, 1993. "A General Equilibrium Model of International Portfolio Choice," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 48(2), pages 529-553, June.
    19. Detemple, Jerome B, 1986. "Asset Pricing in a Production Economy with Incomplete Information," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 41(2), pages 383-391, June.
    20. Gehrig, Thomas, 1993. " An Information Based Explanation of the Domestic Bias in International Equity Investment," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 95(1), pages 97-109.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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:nbr:nberwo:5166. 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: (). General contact details of provider: http://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    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.