European Capital Market Integration

During the last decade the EU capital market has experienced major changes in regulatory, institutional, and economic prerequisites mainly because of the formation of single currency (Euro). This book is mainly concerned with explaining the pros, cons, impediments and prior factors of European capital market integration. Also, measures, types and theories of stock market integration. The book studies the impact of Euro introduction on stock market integration. To do so, the correlation matrix methodology and variance decomposition techniques are applied. The Euro has clearly added to the pressures from technological change and globalization for the creation of new alliances among Europe’s exchanges. The Euro Zone stock markets presented a high degree of integration and efficiency before the Euro. Therefore both stock prices and volatilities reflect idiosyncratic characteristics of each stock market and the Euro accelerated the degree of correlation process. Finally, brief recommendations and suggestions are addressed to enhance the EU stock market integration and lessons learnt from the EU experience that could help to foster the economic integration in the MENA region.