The Federal Reserve Board eagle logo links to Board's home page

International Finance Discussion Papers
The International Finance Discussion Papers logo links to the International Finance Discussion Papers home page Decomposing the U.S. External Returns Differential
Stephanie Curcuru, Tomas Dvorak, and Francis E. Warnock
2009-977  (August 2009)

Abstract:  We decompose the returns differential between U.S. portfolio claims and liabilities into the composition, return, and timing effects. Our most striking and robust finding is that foreigners exhibit poor timing when reallocating between bonds and equities within their U.S. portfolios. The poor timing of foreign investors--caused primarily by deliberate trading, not a lack of portfolio rebalancing--contributes positively to the U.S. external returns differential. We find no evidence that the poor timing is driven by mechanical reserve accumulation by emerging market countries; rather, it is driven almost entirely by the poor timing of rich, developed (mainly European) countries. Finally, while poor foreign timing appears to be persistent across subsamples, other terms in our decomposition (the composition and return effects and U.S. timing abroad), as well as the overall differential, are sometimes negative, sometimes positive, and usually indistinguishable from zero.

Full paper(159 KB PDF) | Full paper (screen reader version)

Keywords
Returns differential, timing effect

PDF files: Adobe Acrobat Reader   ZIP files: PKWARE


Home | IFDPs | List of 2009 IFDPs
Accessibility | Contact Us
Last update: October 20, 2009