Fundamental indexing around the world

Using an international sample from 1982 to 2008, we investigate the performance of global and 50 country-specific (28 developed and 22 emerging) fundamentally weighted portfolios compared to capitalization-weighted portfolios. First, we establish that superior performance of domestic portfolios diminishes considerably when applying a bootstrap procedure for robust performance testing. Second, after controlling for data snooping biases and the value premium, we find evidence of outperforming global fundamental indexes, but no compelling evidence of outperforming country-specific indexes.