International equity holdings and stock returns correlations: Does diversification matter at all for portfolio choice?

Pre-print, Working paper: Do investors completely ignore the basics of portfolio theory? Given their over-exposure on domestic risk, investors should try to hedge this risk by picking foreign assets that have low correlation with their home assets. In the data though, we find a robust positive relationship between bilateral equity holdings and bilateral return correlations. We argue that this finding could be driven by the common impact of "financial integration" on cross-border equity holdings and on cross-market correlations. Indeed, when we instrument current correlation with past correlation to control for endogeneity, we recover asset demand functions that decrease with return correlation.

Author(s)

Nicolas Coeurdacier, Stéphane Guibaud

Date of publication
  • 2005
Keywords JEL
G11 G15
Internal reference
  • PSE Working Papers n°2005-23
Version
  • 1