Dating Capital Market Integration In The EMU

Abstract

This paper analyzes the effect of the Euro on structural breaks in financial market variables in a sample of three EMU (France, Germany, Netherlands) and two non-EMU (U.K. and Switzerland) countries from March 1984 to November 2002. We identify two dates when integration-related structural breaks occurred in European asset pricing; the first in 1986 affected all sample countries whereas the second in 2000 affected only the EMU countries and could be attributed to the adoption of Euro in 1999.