Corporate Governance and International Portfolio Investment in Equities

Abstract

Previous articles examined international portfolio investments either by a single investor or to a single destination. We examine the determinants of international equity investment patterns using multiple pairs of source and host countries. Specifically, we investigate how the corporate governance institutions in investing and recipient countries are associated to equity investment and divestiture using the 2006 and 2008 Coordinated Portfolio Investment Survey (CPIS) data. We find that source countries buy equities in host countries with strong governance more than in host countries with weak governance. We also find that investors from strong governance countries disproportionately sell more their equities in weak governance countries during the recent economic crisis. However, investors from weak governance countries do not demonstrate such divestiture pattern.