Equity home bias and consumption-real exchange rate puzzles: A joint solution

Abstract

In a standard dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with a complete asset market, home agents should hold a foreign equity biased portfolio to hedge the non-traded labor income risk, which contradicts home equity biased portfolios observed worldwide. As the labor income share increases, the degree of home bias should decrease because there is more incentive to hold foreign equity. In the data, there is not any evidence that the labor income share and the degree of home bias are negatively correlated. The standard model also predicts that the consumption differential-real exchange rate correlation is positive, while it is negative in the data. I show that a combination of market incompleteness, non-tradable goods, and labor supply can explain the three features above. My model can generate a large equity home bias, despite the strong positive correlation of non-traded human capital return with domestic equity return. The home bias is not sensitive to the labor income share. The consumption differential-real exchange rate unconditional correlation generated by my model simulation is zero.