Another look at the role of the industrial structure of markets for international diversification strategies1We are especially grateful to Pat Casey and Virge Cavalli at Dow Jones for providing the Dow Jones World Stock Index data and for their assistance with numerous queries. We gratefully acknowledge the comments of Geert Bekaert, William Brigham, Shane Corwin, Steve Foerster, Jeff Harris, Steve Heston, Ajay Khorana, David Mayers, John Persons, René Stulz, and particularly, the referee (Geert Rouwenhorst) and editor (John Long). We also thank participants at the University of Alberta, University of Toronto and Ohio State University, the 1996 UBC Global Investment Conference (Whistler), 1996 International Finance Conference (Georgia Tech), 1996 Western Finance Association Conference, and 1996 Financial Management Association Conference for helpful suggestions. Karolyi thanks the Dice Center for Financial Economics and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for financial support.1
This paper re-examines the extent to which gains from international diversification are due to differences in industrial structure across countries. Recent papers by Roll (1992), Journal of Finance 47, 3–42 and Heston and Rouwenhorst (1994), Journal of Financial Economics 36, 3–27 investigate this issue and find conflicting evidence. Using a new database, the Dow Jones World Stock Index, with coverage in 25 countries and over 66 industry classifications, we decompose comprehensively both country and industrial sources of variation. We confirm that little of the variation in country index returns can be explained by their industrial composition. We also uncover differences in the proportion of variation in industry index returns that is captured by country and industry factors and discuss the implications for global diversification strategies.