INVESTMENT HOME BIAS: AN EMPIRICAL INVESTIGATION OF EMERGING MARKETS

This study explores the degree of home bias among investors in 22 emerging markets from 2005 to 2019. Home bias is computed as the difference between a country’s optimal investment in foreign stock and its actual foreign investments, as derived by the “Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM)”. The study utilizes data from the World Federation of Exchanges (WFE) and the Coordinated Portfolio Investment Survey (CPIS) from the IMF. The findings reveal that investors in China, Greece, India, Indonesia, and the Philippines demonstrate significant home bias. At the same time, those in Argentina, Mexico, Peru, and Poland show the least home bias. Interestingly, only in Hungary short selling of foreign equities is considered optimal. The regression analysis shows a positive relationship between lagged home bias and current home bias and a negative correlation between trade value and home bias at a 1% level of significance. However, the analysis found no significant impact of the global financial crisis, inflation, institutional quality, or natural resource rents on home bias.