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TOWARDS ONE GLOBAL FINANCIAL MARKET: WHO? WHY? HOW? is a collection of studies dedicated to the widely-reaching phenomenon of financial market integration, an ongoing process aiming towards a state where capital flows freely across countries, unhindered by any type of barriers. Perfectly integrated markets seem at the same time theoretically desirable and practically out of reach. The essential questions are how integrated are the world´s financial markets, what are the direction and the speed of the process, and whether it is possible to quantify benefits and costs of market integration. The four essays in this book provide several novel answers. First, new proxies proposed to measure financial market integration give evidence that barriers to integration still take a toll even in developed markets, and important costs of segmentation are estimated for both emerging and developed markets. Integration proceeds at a higher speed for the more committed countries, a notable result being the euro effect in declining home bias. Last but not least, empirical evidence is provided to support the view that financial market integration is beneficial in real, welfare terms.

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CRINA PUNGULESCU has obtained the Ph.D. title in Finance at Tilburg University, where she carried out research in the areas of international finance, empirical asset pricing and economic integration. At present, she continues her work as Professor of Finance at Toulouse Barcelona Business School - ESEC, part of Group ESC Toulouse.

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