Search Results
Working Paper
Cross-border returns differentials
Were the U.S. to persistently earn substantially more on its foreign investments ("U.S. claims") than foreigners earn on their U.S. investments ("U.S. liabilities"), the likelihood that the current environment of sizeable global imbalances will evolve in a benign manner increases. However, using a monthly dataset on the foreign equity and bond portfolios of U.S. investors and the U.S. equity and bond portfolios of foreign investors, we find that the returns differential for portfolio securities is near zero, far smaller than previously reported. Examining all U.S. claims and liabilities ...
Working Paper
The Performance of International Equity Portfolios
This paper evaluates the performance of U.S. investors' portfolios in the equities of over 40 countries over a 25-year period. We find that these portfolios achieved a significantly higher Sharpe ratio than foreign benchmarks, especially since 1990. We uncover three potential reasons for this success. First, U.S. investors abstained from momentum trading and instead sold past winners. Second, conditional performance tests provide no evidence that the superior (unconditional) performance owed to private information, suggesting that the successful exploitation of publicly available information ...
Working Paper
U.S. international equity investment and past prospective returns
Counter to extant stylized facts, using newly available data on country allocations in U.S. investors' foreign equity portfolios we find that (i) U.S. investors do not exhibit returns-chasing behavior, but, consistent with partial portfolio rebalancing, tend to sell past winners; and (ii) U.S. investors increase portfolio weights on a country's equity market just prior to its strong performance, behavior inconsistent with an informational disadvantage. Over the past two decades, U.S. investors' foreign equity portfolios outperformed a value-weighted foreign benchmark by 160 basis points per ...
Working Paper
Firm-level access to international capital markets: evidence from Chilean equities
High growth, liquid Chilean firms have greater relative weights in U.S. equity portfolios, but the most important determinant of a firm's portfolio weight is whether it is listed on a U.S. exchange. Cross-listing does not, however, appear to have permanent benefits: Weights in U.S. portfolios of firms that cross-listed in the mid-1990s increased at the expense of firms that cross-listed earlier. Put another way, firms appear to be able to access international capital at the time of the cross-listing, but this access may well be short-lived.
Working Paper
Why do U.S. cross-listings matter?
This paper investigates the underlying determinants of home bias using a comprehensive sample of U.S. investor holdings of foreign stocks. We document that U.S. cross-listings are economically important, as U.S. ownership in a foreign firm roughly doubles upon cross-listing in the United States. We explore the cross-sectional variation in this "cross-listing effect" and show that increases in U.S. investment are largest in firms from weak accounting backgrounds and in firms that are otherwise informationally opaque, indicating that U.S. investors value the improvements in disclosure ...
Working Paper
International capital flows and U.S. interest rates
Foreign flows have an economically large and statistically significant impact on long-term interest rates. Controlling for various macroeconomic factors we estimate that had there been no foreign flows into U.S. bonds over the past year, the 10-year Treasury yield would currently be 150 basis points higher; even a step-down to average inflows would imply an increase of 105 basis points. The impact of the headline-making foreign official flows?a relatively small subset of total foreign accumulation of U.S. bonds?is also significant but markedly smaller. Our results are robust to a number of ...
Working Paper
Cross-border returns differentials
Were the U.S. to persistently earn substantially more on its foreign investments ("U.S. claims") than foreigners earn on their U.S. investments ("U.S. liabilities"), the likelihood that the current environment of sizeable global imbalances will evolve in a benign manner increases. However, we find that the returns differential of U.S. claims over U.S. liabilities is far smaller than previously reported and, importantly, is near zero for portfolio equity and debt securities. ; > For portfolio securities, we confirm our finding using a separate dataset on the actual foreign equity and bond ...
Working Paper
The stability of large external imbalances: the role of returns differentials
Were the U.S. to persistently earn substantially more on its foreign investments (?U.S. claims?) than foreigners earn on their U.S. investments (?U.S. liabilities?), the likelihood that the current environment of sizeable global imbalances will evolve in a benign manner increases. However, utilizing data on the actual foreign equity and bond portfolios of U.S. investors and the U.S. equity and bond portfolios of foreign investors, we find that the returns differential of U.S. claims over U.S. liabilities is essentially zero. Ending our sample in 2005, the differential is positive, whereas ...
Working Paper
The geography of capital flows: what we can learn from benchmark surveys of foreign equity holdings
To provide insight into the accuracy of U.S. data on international equity transactions, we compare estimates of U.S. holdings of equities in over 40 countries with actual holdings given by comprehensive U.S. benchmark surveys. If the rate of return used to revalue U.S. holdings in a given country is accurate, accurate holdings estimates imply accurate transactions data. For some countries, such as Canada and much of Latin America, the holdings estimates are quite accurate. For the majority of countries, however, there is a great disparity between our estimates and actual amounts, likely ...
Working Paper
Current account sustainability and relative reliability
The sustainability of the large and persistent U.S. current account deficits is one of the biggest issues currently being confronted by international macroeconomists. Some very plausible theories suggest that the substantial global imbalances can continue in a benign manner, other equally plausible theories predict a disorderly resolution, and in general it is very difficult to discern between competing theories. To inform the debates, we view competing theories through the perspective of the relative reliability of the data the theories rely on. Our analysis of the dark matter theory is ...