Financial integration, volatility and crises

In this paper, we present the root cause of the American financial crisis in 2007. We show that financial integration and capital flow volatility is the factor that creates a climate conducive to the emergence of the crisis in the USA and led to its spread to the rest of the world. On the theoretical side, we show that capital flows to the United States in recent years had a pro-cyclical character. We show also that this behavior was the root cause of the crisis and even previous crises such as the Mexican crisis in 1994 and the Asian crisis in 1998. Empirically, we use recent panels data to show that financial integration can lead to financial crises by increasing the volatility of capital flows.