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Journal of Finance Vol. 74 No. 5 2019

The Best of Both Worlds: Accessing Emerging Economies via Developed Markets

Joon Woo Bae; Redouane Elkamhi; Mikhail Simutin1,2

1 BAE Systems (Sweden) · 2 Case Western Reserve University

Abstract

A growing body of evidence suggests that the benefits of international diversification via developed markets have declined dramatically. While emerging markets still offer diversification opportunities, their public equity indices capture only a fraction of emerging countries' economic activity. We propose a diversification approach that exploits the global connectedness of developed countries to gain exposure to emerging countries' overall economies rather than their shallow equity markets. In doing so, we demonstrate that developed markets still offer substantial diversification benefits beyond those available through equity indices. Our results suggest that relying on equity indices to assess diversification benefits understates diversification gains.

DOI
10.1111/jofi.12817
Volume
74
Issue
5
Pages
2579-2617
Language
en
Sources
bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

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