Can information cost explain the puzzle?
Karsten Jeske Economic Review, 2001, issue Q3, pages 31-42 Abstract: Most stock market investors believe that the ideal equity portfolio should be well diversified to lower overall portfolio risk. International financial markets offer a means for diversification, but most investors do not exploit this risk-sharing opportunity and instead hold large shares of their portfolios in domestic stocks-a tendency called home bias. ; To measure how severe home bias is, the author introduces a method of quantifying it. A simple asset allocation model is used to determine the shadow cost of foreign investment-that is, the perceived annual cost of foreign equity necessary to create a bias away from perfect international risk sharing and toward domestic equity. The model shows that in most industrialized nations the shadow costs would have to be unrealistically high to account for home bias. In the United States the home bias is almost 150 basis points per year, by far the lowest among all industria
