Geographical impacts of financial integration

Abstract

Financial markets are usually seen as forerunners in globalization, since the immaterial and weightless nature of finance seems to make geography less relevant than in most other industries. This picture of finance as the most global of businesses, however, is only partly true. For some parts of the financial markets, geography has lost its importance already a long time ago, but there are others where international and regional integration is still incomplete and on-going. Globally, the most important of the on-going processes is the financial opening up of the big emerging market economies, which poses huge challenges for international policy coordination and the development of institutions; at the European level, retail banking markets and payments systems are still very fragmented and a lot of work is needed to achieve the goal of a single market at least in the euro area. Finally, at the subnational level, the impact of financial integration is mostly felt through the changes in the variety of services and customer relationships available to SME’s and households. At each of these levels, financial integration holds great promise in terms of growth, efficiency and economic opportunities, but also requires significant adjustments in public policy and private business performance.