IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/empfin/v13y2006i4-5p396-416.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Geographic versus industry diversification: Constraints matter

Author

Listed:
  • Ehling, Paul
  • Ramos, Sofia B.

Abstract

This research addresses whether geographic diversification provides benefits over industry diversification. In the absence of constraints, no empirical evidence is found to support the argument that country diversification is superior. With short-selling constraints, however, the geographic tangency portfolio is not attainable by industry portfolios. Results with upper and lower constraints on portfolio weights as well as an out-of-sample analysis show that geographic diversification almost consistently outperforms industry portfolios, although we cannot establish statistical significance. JEL Classification: G11, G15
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Ehling, Paul & Ramos, Sofia B., 2006. "Geographic versus industry diversification: Constraints matter," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 13(4-5), pages 396-416, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:empfin:v:13:y:2006:i:4-5:p:396-416
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0927-5398(06)00031-4
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Francesca Carrieri & Vihang Errunza & Sergei Sarkissian, 2012. "The Dynamics of Geographic versus Sectoral Diversification: Is There a Link to the Real Economy?," Quarterly Journal of Finance (QJF), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 2(04), pages 1-41.
    2. Mr. Robin Brooks & Mr. Marco Del Negro, 2002. "The Rise in Comovement Across National Stock Markets: Market Integration or Global Bubble?," IMF Working Papers 2002/147, International Monetary Fund.
    3. Brooks, Robin & Del Negro, Marco, 2004. "The rise in comovement across national stock markets: market integration or IT bubble?," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 11(5), pages 659-680, December.
    4. Ravi Jagannathan & Tongshu Ma, 2003. "Risk Reduction in Large Portfolios: Why Imposing the Wrong Constraints Helps," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 58(4), pages 1651-1683, August.
    5. Huberman, Gur & Kandel, Shmuel, 1987. "Mean-Variance Spanning," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 42(4), pages 873-888, September.
    6. Kandel, Shmuel & McCulloch, Robert & Stambaugh, Robert F, 1995. "Bayesian Inference and Portfolio Efficiency," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 8(1), pages 1-53.
    7. repec:bla:jfinan:v:44:y:1989:i:5:p:1177-89 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. Beckers, Stan & Grinold, Richard & Rudd, Andrew & Stefek, Dan, 1992. "The relative importance of common factors across the European equity markets," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 16(1), pages 75-95, February.
    9. Dusan Isakov & Frédéric Sonney, 2004. "Are Practitioners Right? On the Relative Importance of Industrial Factors in International Stock Returns," Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics (SJES), Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics (SSES), vol. 140(III), pages 355-379, September.
    10. Wang, Zhenyu, 1998. "Efficiency loss and constraints on portfolio holdings," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(3), pages 359-375, June.
    11. Gabriele Galati & Kostas Tsatsaronis, 2003. "The impact of the euro on Europe's financial markets," Financial Markets, Institutions & Instruments, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 12(3), pages 165-222, August.
    12. Basak, Gopal & Jagannathan, Ravi & Sun, Guoqiang, 2002. "A direct test for the mean variance efficiency of a portfolio," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 26(7-8), pages 1195-1215, July.
    13. Green, Richard C & Hollifield, Burton, 1992. "When Will Mean-Variance Efficient Portfolios Be Well Diversified?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 47(5), pages 1785-1809, December.
    14. Best, Michael J & Grauer, Robert R, 1991. "On the Sensitivity of Mean-Variance-Efficient Portfolios to Changes in Asset Means: Some Analytical and Computational Results," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 4(2), pages 315-342.
    15. Griffin, John M. & Andrew Karolyi, G., 1998. "Another look at the role of the industrial structure of markets for international diversification strategies," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(3), pages 351-373, December.
    16. Roll, Richard, 1992. "Industrial Structure and the Comparative Behavior of International Stock Market Indices," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 47(1), pages 3-41, March.
    17. Francesca Carrieri & Vihang Errunza & Sergei Sarkissian, 2004. "Industry Risk and Market Integration," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 50(2), pages 207-221, February.
    18. Robin Brooks & Marco Del Negro, 2002. "International diversification strategies," FRB Atlanta Working Paper 2002-23, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.
    19. Arshanapalli, Bala & Doukas, John & Lang, Larry H. P., 1997. "Common volatility in the industrial structure of global capital markets," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 16(2), pages 189-209, April.
    20. Mark Britten‐Jones, 1999. "The Sampling Error in Estimates of Mean‐Variance Efficient Portfolio Weights," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 54(2), pages 655-671, April.
    21. repec:bla:jfinan:v:58:y:2003:i:4:p:1651-1684 is not listed on IDEAS
    22. Li, Kai & Sarkar, Asani & Wang, Zhenyu, 2003. "Diversification benefits of emerging markets subject to portfolio constraints," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 10(1-2), pages 57-80, February.
    23. repec:bla:jfinan:v:43:y:1988:i:1:p:197-215 is not listed on IDEAS
    24. Heston, Steven L. & Rouwenhorst, K. Geert, 1994. "Does industrial structure explain the benefits of international diversification?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 36(1), pages 3-27, August.
    25. Ferson, Wayne E & Harvey, Campbell R, 1993. "The Risk and Predictability of International Equity Returns," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 6(3), pages 527-566.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Lieven Moor & Piet Sercu, 2010. "Country v sector effects in equity returns and the roles of geographical and firm-size coverage," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 35(4), pages 433-448, November.
    2. Kpate ADJAOUTE & Jean-Pierre DANTHINE, 2004. "Equity Returns and Integration: Is Europe Changing?," FAME Research Paper Series rp117, International Center for Financial Asset Management and Engineering.
    3. Larsen, Ryan A. & Mjelde, James W. & Klinefelter, Danny A. & Wolfley, Jared L., 2009. "Geographical Diversification in Agriculture: An Applied Case to Western U.S. Wheat Growers," 2009 Annual Meeting, January 31-February 3, 2009, Atlanta, Georgia 46819, Southern Agricultural Economics Association.
    4. José G. Dias & Sofia B. Ramos, 2015. "An Analysis of Industry Regimes Synchronization in the Eurozone," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 53(2), pages 255-273, March.
    5. Bastien Drut, 2010. "Sovereign Bonds and Socially Responsible Investment," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 92(1), pages 131-145, April.
    6. Faias, José A. & Ferreira, Miguel A., 2017. "Does institutional ownership matter for international stock return comovement?," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 64-83.
    7. Marie Brière & Bastien Drut & Valérie Mignon & Kim Oosterlinck & Ariane Szafarz, 2013. "Is the Market Portfolio Efficient? A New Test of Mean-Variance Efficiency when all Assets are Risky," Finance, Presses universitaires de Grenoble, vol. 34(1), pages 7-41.
    8. Umutlu, Mehmet & Yargı, Seher Gören & Zaremba, Adam, 2023. "Market segmentation and international diversification across country and industry portfolios," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    9. Eiling, Esther & Gerard, Bruno & Hillion, Pierre & de Roon, Frans A., 2012. "International portfolio diversification: Currency, industry and country effects revisited," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 31(5), pages 1249-1278.
    10. Fletcher, Jonathan, 2018. "An empirical examination of the diversification benefits of U.K. international equity closed-end funds," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 23-34.
    11. Fedenia, Mark & Shafer, Sherrill & Skiba, Hilla, 2013. "Information immobility, industry concentration, and institutional investors’ performance," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(6), pages 2140-2159.
    12. Marie Brière & Bastien Drut & Valérie Mignon & Kim Oosterlinck & Ariane Szafarz, 2011. "Is the Market Portfolio Efficient? A New Test to Revisit the Roll (1977) versus Levy and Roll (2010) Controversy," EconomiX Working Papers 2011-20, University of Paris Nanterre, EconomiX.
    13. Marie Brière & Ariane Szafarz, 2021. "When it rains, it pours: Multifactor asset management in good and bad times," Journal of Financial Research, Southern Finance Association;Southwestern Finance Association, vol. 44(3), pages 641-669, September.
    14. Sulaiman Al-Jassar & Imad A. Moosa, 2020. "Country Effects, Industry Effects and the Effectiveness of International Diversification Within the GCC Region," Review of Pacific Basin Financial Markets and Policies (RPBFMP), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 22(04), pages 1-18, January.
    15. Bessler, Wolfgang & Taushanov, Georgi & Wolff, Dominik, 2021. "Optimal asset allocation strategies for international equity portfolios: A comparison of country versus industry optimization," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 72(C).
    16. repec:dau:papers:123456789/9297 is not listed on IDEAS
    17. Jonathan Fletcher & Elizabeth Littlejohn & Andrew Marshall, 2023. "Exploring the performance of US international bond mutual funds," The Financial Review, Eastern Finance Association, vol. 58(4), pages 765-782, November.
    18. Hakim, Idwan & Masih, Mansur, 2014. "Portfolio diversification strategy for Malaysia: International and sectoral perspectives," MPRA Paper 58909, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. Larsen, Ryan A. & Vedenov, Dmitry V. & Leatham, David J., 2009. "Enterprise-level risk assessment of geographically diversified commercial farms: a copula approach," 2009 Annual Meeting, January 31-February 3, 2009, Atlanta, Georgia 46763, Southern Agricultural Economics Association.
    20. De Moor, Lieven & Sercu, Piet, 2011. "Country versus sector factors in equity returns: The roles of non-unit exposures," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 18(1), pages 64-77, January.
    21. Larsen, Ryan A. & Leatham, David J. & Mjelde, James W. & Wolfley, Jared L., 2008. "Geographical Diversification: An Application of Copula Based CVaR," 2008 Agricultural and Rural Finance Markets in Transition, September 25-26, 2008, Kansas City, Missouri 119533, Regional Research Committee NC-1014: Agricultural and Rural Finance Markets in Transition.
    22. Jonathan Fletcher, 2017. "An Empirical Examination of the Incremental Contribution of Stock Characteristics in UK Stock Returns," IJFS, MDPI, vol. 5(4), pages 1-19, October.
    23. Łukasz Dopierała & Magdalena Mosionek-Schweda & Daria Ilczuk, 2020. "Does the Asset Allocation Policy Affect the Performance of Climate-Themed Funds? Empirical Evidence from the Scandinavian Mutual Funds Market," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(2), pages 1-23, January.
    24. Marie Briere & Ariane Szafarz, 2018. "Factors and Sectors in Asset Allocation: Stronger Together?," Working Papers CEB 18-016, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    25. Mark Fedenia & Sherrill Shaffer & Hilla Skiba, 2012. "Information immobility, industry concentration, and institutional investors' performance," CAMA Working Papers 2012-24, Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis, Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Eiling, Esther & Gerard, Bruno & Hillion, Pierre & de Roon, Frans A., 2012. "International portfolio diversification: Currency, industry and country effects revisited," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 31(5), pages 1249-1278.
    2. Baele, Lieven & Inghelbrecht, Koen, 2009. "Time-varying Integration and International diversification strategies," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 16(3), pages 368-387, June.
    3. Paul EHLING & Sofia B. RAMOS, 2003. "Geographical versus Industrial Diversification: A Mean Variance Spanning Approach," FAME Research Paper Series rp80, International Center for Financial Asset Management and Engineering.
    4. Julia Koralun-Bereźnicka, 2011. "Country and industry factors as determinants of corporate financial liquidity in the European Union countries," Bank i Kredyt, Narodowy Bank Polski, vol. 42(1), pages 19-48.
    5. Marcelo, José Luis Miralles & Quirós, José Luis Miralles & Martins, José Luís, 2013. "The role of country and industry factors during volatile times," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 26(C), pages 273-290.
    6. Kristin J. Forbes & Menzie D. Chinn, 2004. "A Decomposition of Global Linkages in Financial Markets Over Time," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 86(3), pages 705-722, August.
    7. Sylvia Gottschalk, 2023. "From Black Wednesday to Brexit: Macroeconomic shocks and correlations of equity returns in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(3), pages 2843-2873, July.
    8. Marie Brière & Bastien Drut & Valérie Mignon & Kim Oosterlinck & Ariane Szafarz, 2013. "Is the Market Portfolio Efficient? A New Test of Mean-Variance Efficiency when all Assets are Risky," Finance, Presses universitaires de Grenoble, vol. 34(1), pages 7-41.
    9. Lieven Baele & Koen Inghelbrecht, 2005. "Structural versus Temporary Drivers of Country and Industry Risk," International Finance 0511005, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Geert Bekaert & Robert J. Hodrick & Xiaoyan Zhang, 2009. "International Stock Return Comovements," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 64(6), pages 2591-2626, December.
    11. repec:dau:papers:123456789/9297 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Lieven Moor & Piet Sercu, 2010. "Country v sector effects in equity returns and the roles of geographical and firm-size coverage," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 35(4), pages 433-448, November.
    13. Fletcher, Jonathan, 2018. "An empirical examination of the diversification benefits of U.K. international equity closed-end funds," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 23-34.
    14. Jonathan Fletcher, 2018. "An Examination of the Benefits of Factor Investing in U.K. Stock Returns," International Journal of Economics and Finance, Canadian Center of Science and Education, vol. 10(4), pages 154-170, April.
    15. Moerman, Gerard A., 2008. "Diversification in euro area stock markets: Country versus industry," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 27(7), pages 1122-1134, November.
    16. Balli, Faruk & Balli, Hatice O., 2011. "Sectoral equity returns in the Euro region: Is there any room for reducing portfolio risk?," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 63(2), pages 89-106.
    17. Marie Brière & Ariane Szafarz, 2021. "When it rains, it pours: Multifactor asset management in good and bad times," Journal of Financial Research, Southern Finance Association;Southwestern Finance Association, vol. 44(3), pages 641-669, September.
    18. Xing, Xuejing, 2004. "A note on the time-series relationship between market industry concentration and market volatility," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 14(2), pages 105-115, April.
    19. Borgsen, Sina & Glaser, Markus, 2005. "Diversifikationseffekte durch small und mid caps? : Eine empirische Untersuchung basierend auf europäischen Aktienindizes," Papers 05-10, Sonderforschungsbreich 504.
    20. Dusan Isakov & Frédéric Sonney, 2004. "Are Practitioners Right? On the Relative Importance of Industrial Factors in International Stock Returns," Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics (SJES), Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics (SSES), vol. 140(III), pages 355-379, September.
    21. Hooy, Chee-Wooi & Lee, Meng-Horng & Chong, Terence Tai Leung, 2017. "The Sources of Country and Industry Variations in ASEAN Stock Returns," MPRA Paper 80574, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions
    • G15 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - International Financial Markets

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:empfin:v:13:y:2006:i:4-5:p:396-416. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jempfin .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.