The residence-based framework of measuring international exposure is increasingly less informative, as a growing number of firms locate in low-tax jurisdictions and issue securities through offshore subsidiaries. This has clouded the view of capital flows and investor exposures from standard...

We merge portfolio theories of home bias with corporate finance theories of insider ownership to create the optimal corporate ownership theory of the home bias. The theory has two components: (i) foreign portfolio investors exhibit a large home bias against countries with poor governance because...