Home Bias: Evidence From The Stock Exchange

This paper deals with issues connected to the home bias, which is a tendency of investors to keep more domestic assets versus foreign ones. We use annual data on the value of share trading of 68 stock exchanges in 68 countries for the period of 2003-2015 to find out if home bias exists given domestic and foreign shares are traded under the same regulatory framework, with the same transaction costs and rules for information availability applied; and if it does, then what factors are responsible for it. We find that the home bias increases in periods of crisis and becomes lower in periods of relative stability. In addition, home bias tends to be smaller in countries with better control of corruption and that are more open to investments. A Hausman-Taylor estimation confirms this result and suggests that countries with better institutional environments tend to have smaller home bias. Moreover, countries that are more open to investments have more foreign companies listed on their stock exchanges.