Mutual Fund Manager Home Bias Revisited

Mutual Fund Manager Home Bias Revisited
Author: Liudmila Gormina
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2019
Genre:
ISBN:

This paper demonstrates that mutual fund managers are affected by home bias when making the decisions on portfolio allocation, and that the home bias is driven by familiarity rather than by information. Using a new definition of home states that includes the locations where the manager grew up, studied and worked, this research shows that the mutual fund managers in the U.S. tend to overweigh their home states in comparison to the benchmark funds with the same investing style. The home state overweighting is less prominent among managers with better education, and more conspicuous among managers with bigger work experience. The fund holdings in the home states of the manager perform no better or worse than the benchmark, which leads to the conclusion that the home bias is driven by familiarity.

No Place Like Home

No Place Like Home
Author: Veronika Krepely Pool
Publisher:
Total Pages: 50
Release: 2018
Genre:
ISBN:

We show that familiarity affects the portfolio decisions of mutual fund managers. Controlling for fund location, funds overweight stocks from their managers' home states by 12% compared to their peers. In team-managed funds, home-state overweighting is 37% larger than the fund location effect. The home-state bias is stronger if the manager is inexperienced, is resource-constrained, or spent more time in his home state. Home-state stocks do not outperform other holdings, confrming that home-state investments are not informed. The overweighting also leads to excessively risky portfolios.

The Equity Home Bias Puzzle

The Equity Home Bias Puzzle
Author: Ian Cooper
Publisher:
Total Pages: 133
Release: 2013
Genre: International finance
ISBN: 9781601987631

Home bias - the empirical phenomenon that investors assign anomalously high weights to their own domestic assets - has puzzled academics for decades: financial theory predicts that an internationally well diversified portfolio of stocks and short-term bonds can reduce risk significantly without affecting expected return. Although the globalization of international equity markets has increased international investments, equity portfolios remain severely home biased today, and no single explanation seems to solve the puzzle completely. In this paper, we first provide a thorough description of the equity home bias phenomenon by defining, discussing, and applying the competing measures and presenting some estimates of the costs of under-diversification. Second, we evaluate the explanations for the equity home bias proposed in the literature such as information asymmetries, behavioral aspects, barriers to foreign investment, and governance issues, and conclude that each explanation on its own falls short, suggesting that the equity home bias probably reflects a combination of factors. Lastly, we review the implications of international under-diversification for portfolio formation and the cost of capital of companies.

Equity Home Bias in International Finance

Equity Home Bias in International Finance
Author: Kavous Ardalan
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 362
Release: 2019-05-17
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1000008274

This book provides a comprehensive and critical analysis of research outcomes on the equity home bias puzzle – that people overinvest in domestic stocks relative to the theoretically optimal investment portfolio. It introduces place attachment – the bonding that occurs between individuals and their meaningful environments – as a new explanation for equity home bias, and presents a philosophically multi-paradigmatic view of place attachment. For the first time, a comprehensive and up-to-date review of the extant literature is provided, demonstrating that place attachment is a contributing factor to 22 different topics in which variations of home bias are present. The author also analyses the social-psychological underpinnings of place attachment, and considers the effect of multi-culturalism on the future of equity home bias. The book’s unique approach discusses the issues in conceptual terms rather than through data and statistical methods. This multi- and inter-disciplinary book is an invaluable resource for graduate students and researchers interested in economics, finance, philosophy, and/or methodology, introducing them to a new line of research.

The Home(-Sickness) Bias of International Holdings

The Home(-Sickness) Bias of International Holdings
Author: Quoc Nguyen
Publisher:
Total Pages: 50
Release: 2017
Genre:
ISBN:

U.S. mutual funds invest significantly more in countries that have a strong associated ethnic group population near the funds' offices. Moreover, the ethnicity of the mutual fund's manager is strongly predictive of the mutual fund's international holdings. Mutual funds that take advantage of the information generated by the local ethnic groups outperform otherwise similar funds by more than 1.5% per quarter in their international holdings. This paper documents a new form of home bias, sheds light on a new information channel for international investment decisions, and contributes to the debate on whether mutual fund managers have skills.

Equity Home Bias

Equity Home Bias
Author: Amir Andrew Amadi
Publisher:
Total Pages: 37
Release: 2004
Genre:
ISBN:

The presence of home bias in equity portfolios has been a focus of the international finance literature for the past couple of decades. Recent developments and data collections, however, offer some insight into understanding the equity home bias phenomenon. This paper first demonstrates that there has been a distinct reduction equity home bias in recent years. It then examines if any of the prominent theoretical explanations or recent developments such as free trade and globalization, the advent the internet, and the rise of emerging markets and mutual fund investment have affected the increase in foreign diversification. The empirical analysis produces some interesting results. It demonstrates that the rise of the internet and mutual fund investment have indeed affected the changes in foreign diversification, supporting an information-asymmetries explanation. The results also indicate that other factors such as market size, which intuitively might be expected to affect foreign diversification, are insignificant.

The Genesis of Home Bias? The Location and Portfolio Choices of Investment Company Start-Ups

The Genesis of Home Bias? The Location and Portfolio Choices of Investment Company Start-Ups
Author: Jerry T. Parwada
Publisher:
Total Pages: 42
Release: 2008
Genre:
ISBN:

Fund managers' bias towards geographically proximate securities is a well-researched phenomenon, yet the origins of their location choices have received little empirical scrutiny. This paper traces the employment and geographic heritage of 358 entrepreneurial fund managers and analyzes the determinants of where they locate their firms and stock selections. The evidence suggests start-ups tend to be based close to the origins of their founders, and in regions with more investment management firms, banking establishments, and large institutional money managers. New money managers show a strong local bias in their equity holdings, three times the levels previously documented for mutual funds. The propensity to invest closer home correlates strongly with the presence of sub-advisory opportunities from institutional investors in the vicinity. While home bias levels between managers who relocate with their start-ups and the rest of the entrepreneurs are similar, preferences for stocks that were formally local persist.

Asymmetric Information, Portfolio Managers and Home Bias

Asymmetric Information, Portfolio Managers and Home Bias
Author: Wioletta Dziuda
Publisher:
Total Pages: 26
Release: 2009
Genre:
ISBN:

Why do investors excessively tilt their portfolio towards domestic assets? Recent studies suggest asymmetric information plays a significant role in the home equity bias puzzle. A key assumption in theoretical models is that agents invest in assets and process information on their own. However, most international investments are executed by managers in financial institutions. These institutions allocate significant resources to processing information, making the asymmetric information assumption less appealing. In this paper, we explain home bias at the fund level by showing how information asymmetry at the individual level has relevant implications at the portfolio management level. Agents delegate their investment decisions to portfolio managers of different and uncertain ability. Investors are better informed about the performance of domestic markets; and therefore, are more able to evaluate the ability of managers operating in these markets. This, in turn, makes investing in domestic markets less risky and attracts more managers. Additionally, highly skilled managers benefit more from higher transparency, and this is why they are more likely to choose to operate in the domestic market. Therefore, a small information asymmetry of individual investors generates home bias due to highly skilled managers in the domestic market (higher than in the foreign market) and diversification (a higher number of managers in the domestic market). We simulate the model and find that on average 69.2% of investment is in the domestic market.

What Drives Home Bias? Evidence from Fund Managers' Views

What Drives Home Bias? Evidence from Fund Managers' Views
Author: Torben Lütje
Publisher:
Total Pages: 24
Release: 2004
Genre:
ISBN:

A survey of fund managers reveals home bias for these sophisticated investors in an unrestricted setting. Proximity, perceived informational advantage and higher expected returns are confirmed as accompanying factors. In addition, the home bias of equity managers is also related to institutional, informational and behavioral characteristics. The perceived informational advantage does not seem to be valid. Multivariate analyses indicate that home bias is mainly related to relative return optimism, non-fundamental information and peculiar behavior towards risk. We interpret these as characteristics of less than fully rational behavior. It is consistently found that this pattern does not apply to bond managers.

Home Bias at the Fund Level

Home Bias at the Fund Level
Author: Harald Hau
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2008
Genre: Asset allocation
ISBN:

This paper presents new stylized facts on the distribution of the home bias at the fund level. We find (i) a large heterogeneity in the degree of home bias across mutual funds; (ii) a positive correlation between the size of funds and home bias; and (iii) a positive correlation between the size of funds, the number of foreign countries and the number of sectors in which they invest. These facts constitute a challenge for existing theories.