NBER Publications by Harald Hau

This paper presents new stylized facts on the distribution of the home bias at the fund level. We find (i) a large heterogeneity in the degree of home bias across mutual funds; (ii) a positive correlation between the size of funds and home bias; and (iii) a positive correlation between the size of funds, the number of foreign countries and the number of sectors in which they invest. These facts constitute a challenge for existing theories.

Cross border capital flows and returns on assets are two key variables in international macroeconomics. Difficult endogeneity issues plague any analysis of their correlations in aggregate data. This paper examines the dynamics of international portfolios with a unique data set on the stock allocations of approximately 6,500 international equity funds domiciled in four different currency areas during a 5 year period. The disaggregated data structure allows us to examine the effect of realized returns on portfolio adjustments. Do managers rebalance their portfolios towards their desired weights or do they increase their exposure to appreciating assets? We find strong support for portfolio rebalancing behavior aimed at stabilizing exchange rate risk and equity risk exposure around desired lev...

We explore whether the pattern of international equity returns, equity portfolio flows, and exchange rate returns are consistent with the hypothesis that (unhedged) global investors rebalance their portfolio in order to limit their exchange rate exposure when there are (1) relative equity return and (2) exchange rate shocks. We also explore whether (3) equity flow shocks influence the exchange rates and relative equity prices. In the estimation of the VAR system we do not impose any causal ordering upon the primitive shocks, but instead identify the system based on theoretical priors about the contemporaneous conditional correlations between the three variables. International data for the five largest equity markets are consistent with a theory in which equity returns and portfolio rebalan...

We develop an equilibrium model in which exchange rates, stock prices and capital flows are jointly determined under incomplete forex risk trading. Incomplete hedging of forex risk, documented for U.S. global mutual funds, has three important implications: 1) exchange rates are almost as volatile as equity prices when the forex liquidity supply is not infinitely price elastic; 2) higher returns in the home equity market relative to the foreign equity market are associated with a home currency depreciation; 3) net equity flows into the foreign market are positively correlated with a foreign currency appreciation. The model predictions are strongly supported at daily, monthly and quarterly frequencies for 17 OECD countries vis-…-vis the U.S. Moreover, correlations are strongest after 1990 an...