Can trade costs in goods explain home bias in assets?

Eric van Wincoop and Francis Warnock

Journal of International Money and Finance, 2010, vol. 29, issue 6, 1108-1123

Abstract: A debate has raged in the general equilibrium literature on the impact of trade costs on portfolio home bias. In all of these models there is a simple, easily observed covariance-variance ratio. We compute this term using data on real exchange rates and asset returns. The resulting portfolio home bias is close to zero, implying that GE models that create home bias through trade costs are not grounded in empirical reality. Our results enable the GE literature to move forward, but in a way in which the theoretical models are not at odds with an easily observed empirical regularity.

Keywords: Portfolio; home; bias; Trade; costs (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (41)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261-5606(09)00135-1
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jimfin:v:29:y:2010:i:6:p:1108-1123

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of International Money and Finance is currently edited by J. R. Lothian

More articles in Journal of International Money and Finance from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().