TY  - JOUR
AU  - Bordo,Michael D.
AU  - Eichengreen,Barry
AU  - Kim,Jongwoo
TI  - Was There Really an Earlier Period of International Financial           Integration Comparable to Today?
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 6738
PY  - 1998
Y2  - September 1998
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w6738
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w6738.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Michael D. Bordo
Department of Economics
Rutgers University
New Jersey Hall
75 Hamilton Street
New Brunswick, NJ 08901
Tel: 732/822-7152
Fax: 732/932-7416
E-Mail: bordo@econ.rutgers.edu

Barry Eichengreen
Department of Economics
University of California, Berkeley
549 Evans Hall 3880
Berkeley, CA 94720-3880
Tel: 510/642-2772
Fax: 510/643-0926
E-Mail: eichengr@econ.Berkeley.edu

Jongwoo Kim
Department of Economics
Rutgers University
New Brunswick, NJ  08903
Tel: 212-648-3319, jwk@rci.rutgers.edu
E-Mail: jongwoo.kim@riskmetrics.com
AB  - 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 respects the financial integration of the pre-1914 era remains unsurpassed, but in others today's financial markets are even more closely integrated than those in the past. The difference today is that new information-generating and processing technologies have reduced the market-segmenting effects of asymmetric information.  In consequence, the range of financial claims that are traded internationally has broadened. While international financial transactions were once determined by claims on governments, railroads, and mining companies, entities with tangible and therefore relatively transparent assets, international investors now transact freely in a much broader range of securities.
ER  -