Assessing the Financial Integration of Central and Eastern European Countries with the Euro Area: Evidence from Panel Data Cointegration Tests

The aim of this paper is to assess the financial integration degree of the Central and Eastern European Countries (CEECs) with the euro area in the prospect of their integration in the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). To this end, we test the Feldstein-Horioka regression for a non-stationary and heterogeneous panel of 10 CEECs and the euro area. In order to overcome some empirical shortcomings of this approach, we employ the recently developed panel data unit root tests and cointegration techniques. The empirical findings reveal that the financial integration process of the CEECs with the euro area is not yet complete. Another contribution of this paper is to show that this process is linked to the institutional monetary arrangement of these countries.