I show that the principal components analysis can be used to quantify the degree of economic integration, trace its evolution over time, and capture episodes of market segmentation. Based on long series of sovereign bond data for fifteen industrialized economies I document clear evidence of...

Access to world capital markets and net investment income flows between countries help protect national income from country-specific output shocks. I empirically study what factors explain cross-country differences in the extent of risk sharing from international factor income. An index of...

We estimate potential welfare gains from financial integration and corresponding better insurance against country-specific shocks to output (risk sharing) for the twenty-five European Union countries. Using theoretical utility-based measures we express the gains from risk sharing as the utility...