Geographic Investing: Stock Return Indexes Based on Company Operations

Portfolio allocations to firms of various geographic areas should be guided by underlying risks of operations. In most statistical studies of international stock returns, a firm is included in a country’s index if its headquarters is located in that country, a classification scheme that ignores the operations of the firm taking place in multiple geographic areas. In prior work, the authors have proposed a model of country factors that is based on the business activities of all firms operating in a country, be they domestic firms or multinationals. In the present paper, the authors compare the resulting indexes with the domestic revenue exposure indexes already available in the industry. The authors conclude that their new indexes allow a portfolio manager to track geographic risk much more accurately.