This paper investigates the potential benefits of international diversification with short selling constraints from the perspective of Chinese investors. Based on a stream of time-rolling realized portfolios, we show that Chinese investors can gain substantially from international investments. In particular, the expected portfolio returns as well as the risk-adjusted returns can be greatly enhanced by diversifying over emerging markets, and the portfolio risk can be largely reduced by investing in developed markets in comparison with purely domestic investments. The results are robust when the out-of-sample tests are employed and when investors start with a more mean-variance efficient domestic portfolio. In addition, our analysis illustrates that optimal portfolio weights vary significantly over time due to fluctuations in the correlations among international markets, suggesting that international portfolios need to be rebalanced frequently in order to generate the greatest possible diversification benefits.
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