European monetary integration was one element in the process of financial market integration but by far not the only one. The paper traces the development of financial markets and systems in Europe from the beginnings of the euromarkets in the 1950s over early exchange rate arrangements and the...

The importance of an efficient securities clearing and settlement system lies on the safer transfer of ownership of assets against payment. Such a system must be developed in a way to minimize the risks involved on securities transactions, and it must still offer lower costs, which do not hinder...

In contrast to the well established markets such as the dollar-euro market, recent CIP deviations observed in the onshore dollar-RMB forward market were primarily caused by con-version restrictions in the spot market rather than by changes in credit risk and/or liquidity constraint. This paper...

EU enlargement rests on the proven success of European unification. European monetary integration and the introduction of euro are probably the best examples of integration. The EU financial sector has been going through a large restructuring program in the last decades. There was a continuous...

Interest in examining the financial linkages of economies has increased in the wake of the 2008/2009 global financial crisis. Applying the concepts of beta- and sigma-convergence of stock market returns, we assess changes over time in the degree of stock market integration between Russia and...

Better developed legal and political institutions result in greater availability of reliable firm-specific information. When stock prices reflect more firm-specific information there will be less stock price synchronicity. This paper traces the experience of China, an economy undergoing dramatic...

This study has investigated to which extent rating events influence sovereign bond yield spreads and overall financial market volatility. While rating agencies are part and parcel of today's financial markets, the study succeeds in tracing some independent effect that ratings exert on financial...

In a broad sample of developed and emerging economies over the past ten years we apply the approximate factor model in a search for common global and regional driving-forces in stock market returns and volatility. We focus particularly on two emerging stock markets - Russia and China, because of...