Hedging against the government: a solution to the home asset bias puzzle

Tiago Berriel () and Saroj Bhattarai

No 113, Globalization Institute Working Papers from Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas

Abstract: This paper explains two puzzling facts: international nominal bonds and equity portfolios are biased domestically. In our two-country model, holding domestic government nominal debt provides a hedge against shocks to bond returns and the impact on taxes they induce. For this result, only two features are essential: some nominal risk and taxes falling only on domestic agents. A third feature explains why agents choose to hold primarily domestic equity: government spending falls on domestic goods. Then, an increase in government spending raises the returns on domestic equity, providing a hedge against the subsequent increase in taxes. These conclusions are robust to a wide range of preference parameter values and the incompleteness of financial markets. A calibrated version of the model predicts asset holdings that quantitatively match the data.

JEL-codes: F30 F41 G11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 62 pages
Date: 2012
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dge, nep-mac and nep-opm
Note: Published as: Berriel, Tiago C. and Saroj Bhattarai (2013), "Hedging Against the Government: A Solution to the Home Asset Bias Puzzle," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics 5 (1): 102-134.
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

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Journal Article: Hedging against the Government: A Solution to the Home Asset Bias Puzzle (2013)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fip:feddgw:113

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