This paper provides a general framework for analyzing the optimal degree and form of financial integration. Full integration is not in general optimal: faced with a choice between two polar regimes, full integration or autarky, autarky may be superior. The intuition is simple: if underlying...

The financial crisis has re-ignited the fierce debate about the merits of financial globalization and its implications for growth, especially for developing countries. The empirical literature has not been able to conclusively establish the presumed growth benefits of financial integration....

This paper investigates the changing pattern and efficacy of sterilization within emerging market countries as they liberalize markets and integrate with the world economy. We estimate the marginal propensity to sterilize foreign asset accumulation associated with net balance of payments...

Large and persistent global financial imbalances need not be the harbinger of a world financial crash. Instead, we show that these imbalances can be the outcome of financial integration when countries differ in financial markets deepness. In particular, countries with more advanced financial...

The ebb and flow of international capital since the nineteenth century illustrates recurring difficulties, as well as the alternative perspectives from which policymakers have tried to confront them. This paper is devoted to documenting these vicissitudes quantitatively and explaining them....

How does financial integration impact capital accumulation, current-account dynamics, and cross-country inequality? We investigate this question within a two-country, general-equilibrium, incomplete-markets model that focuses on the importance of idiosyncratic entrepreneurial risk-- a risk that...

The paper analyzes the effects of financial integration on the stability of the banking system. Financial integration allows banks in different regions to smooth local liquidity shocks by borrowing and lending on a world interbank market. We show under which conditions financial integration...

In this paper we reconsider the international market integration, starting at high levels in the late nineteenth century, collapsing between the wars, and recovering gradually after 1945 to reach levels comparable to pre-1914 in the 1990's. The empirical evidence we survey suggests that in some...

Measuring the integration of world capital markets is notoriously difficult. For example, regulatory changes which appear comprehensive may have little impact on the functioning of the capital market if they fail to lead to foreign portfolio inflows. In contrast to the usual practice of...

We propose a conditional measure of capital market integration that allows us to characterize both the cross-section and time-series of expected returns in developed and emerging markets. Our measure, which arises from a conditional regime-switching model, allows us to describe expected returns...