Are the Gains from Foreign Diversification Diminishing? Assessing the Impact with Cross-listed Stocks / Karen K. Lewis, Sandy Lai.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lewis, Karen K.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Lai, Sandy.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w18627.

NBER working paper series no. w18627

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2012.

Summary:

How important is foreign diversification? In this paper, we re-examine this question motivated by findings from the literature about foreign companies that are listed on US exchanges. Specifically, domestic portfolios including cross-listed stocks can provide the same diversification as foreign market returns without the need for US investors to go abroad. At the same time, the betas of these foreign stock returns against the US market increase after cross-listing, suggesting diversification worsens over time. In this paper, we assess the impact of these changes on foreign diversification for a US investor. We test for and estimate breaks in the sensitivity of individual foreign stocks listed on US exchanges. We find that roughly half of the changes in betas arise from greater integration between the U.S. and the companies' home markets, not in the companies betas themselves. Moreover, the gains from diversifying into these stocks has declined over time.

Notes:

Print version record

December 2012.