Herding Behavior by Equity Foreign Investors on Emerging Markets

This article analyzes empirically the herding behavior on emerging markets, measuring the degree of herding by foreign investors on emerging equity markets, and evaluating the effects of this behavior on the riskiness of the markets. We use an adaptation of the LSV Herding measure and calculate this measure for a sample of 9 emerging markets over the period 2000-2005. Our overall mean, 4.75, although is lower than previous studies with emerging equity markets during the late 1990’s, still indicates the presence of herding behavior. Therefore we have evidence to support the hypothesis of herding decreasing from the period 1995-2000 to 2000-2005. However, the difference of the sample characteristics between our study and the previous ones may be the responsible for these results. The two main differences on our sample is that we use country allocation, instead of stock allocation (as in Bowe and Domuta (2004) and Kim and Wei (2002)), and the all universe of foreign investors, instead of only funds as in Borensztein and Gelos (2003). In this way an alternative hypothesis would be that funds herd in a higher intensity than the other types of investors. Regarding the effects of Herding on the risk measures, our results are mixed. Our regression analysis showed no effects of the Herding on the volatility, which is one of the main risk measures used by investors. However, the fat tails of equity return’s distribution may be caused by this herding behavior of foreigners. Further studies should address this issue in more in depth since the fat tails may be due to herding of other types of investors also.