Home Sweet Home: Home Bias and International Diversification Among Individual Investors

Abstract

A striking feature of international portfolio investment is the extent to which equity portfolios are concentrated in the domestic market of the investor. Many authors have tried to explain this home bias, but so far, this literature has not succeeded in providing a generally accepted explanation for it. Also, there are no previous results regarding home bias on an individual level, i.e. what characterises an individual who show a relatively large reluctance towards international diversification and investments. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether there is a home bias in the portfolios of mutual funds, which are formed as a part of the pension plan in Sweden. While controlling for several reasons for home bias which are found in the previous research, as e.g. transactions costs and risk level of investments, this study analyses the nature of portfolio allocation and the home bias on an individual investor basis. A multinomial logit model is formulated to estimate the likelihood of home bias, where demographical features of the individuals are used as explanatory variables. The results show several significant, statistically and economically, relationships between individual characteristics and the likelihood of home bias. In particular, age, gender, net wealth, occupation and familiarity with risky investments are important. The type of individual with the highest likelihood of home bias is identified as a not so wealthy older man, who works for the government and holds no other risky assets.