A Capital Markets Union (CMU) is the great hope of European policymakers. The plan for a CMU tries to reduce the reliance of European investors on banks and build up a market-based risk-sharing channel between member states. Our empirical analysis raises doubts that this can be achieved through...

This paper shows correlations in GDP fluctuations rise with financial integration. Finance serves to increase international correlations in both consumption and GDP fluctuations, which explains the persistent gap between the two in the data, a quantity puzzle. The positive association between...

Fluctuations in GDP are more synchronized internationally than fluctuations in Consumption, and they remain so even between financially integrated economies, where the ranking should in theory be the reverse. This paper shows this happens because correlations in GDP fluctuations rise with...

With the lifting of remaining capital controls inside the EU in 1990, an essential step towards EMU was taken. This raises the questions of whether on the one hand there is an observable convergence of interest rates inside the EU and on the other if alongside this financial integration, EMU...