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...

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...

On January 1,1999 euro became the currency for 11 member states of the European Union. Since then the dollar-euro exchange rate has completed a full turning. Three years of depreciation of the euro followed by three years of appreciation without wild fluctuations asks for an explanation which...

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...

Recently a variety of exchange and interest rate models capturing the dynamics during the transition from an exchange rate arrangement of floating rates into a currency union have been derived. While these stochastic equilibrium models in continous time are theoretically rigorous, a systematic...

Recent theory on exchange rate dynamics suggests that the mere announcement of regime switching from floating to fixed rates at a given future date triggers a reduction in exchange rate volatility during the interim period. Using a Markov-switching GARCH model this paper estimates the volatility...