Imperfect financial integration and asymmetric information: competing explanations of the home bias puzzle?

This paper shows that imperfect financial integration and informational asymmetries are not competing theories but rather complementary ideas to a single explanation of the home bias puzzle. We develop a rational expectations model of asset prices with investors that face informational constraints and find that informational advantages arise endogenously as a response to small financial frictions. We also present empirical evidence that (i) international financial frictions are correlated to observed patterns of US investors’ attention and that (ii) the attention US investors allocate to foreign stocks helps explain home bias towards those countries, even after controlling for financial integration levels.