Advanced and rapidly developing countries vie to bring International Financial Services (IFS) industries to some of their major cities or to keep them there. The ICT revolution has made those IFS that can be commoditized footloose in search of cost efficiency. High value-added financial...

Omitted from traditional optimal currency area criteria, price effects are important because regional monetary union protects from pricing risks and contributes to greater uniformity and efficiency in price-setting. Among member countries it reduces price dispersion in tradeables in part by...