Trade in financial services is integrated through Economic Integration Agreements (EIAs), in addition to the multilateral trading system developed under the WTO. Securities' clearing and settlement services have nowadays become more important than ever. The latter have gained enormous strategic...

Future markets are the result of trying to eliminate or reduce risk, i.e. an attempt to avoid instability of prices in international business. Since trading on future markets reduces the risk of business, it significantly increases the scope of trade and number of stakeholders, which logically...

Two seemingly unconnected empirical results suggest an intriguing mechanism. First, economic integration helps harmonize prices internationally, with trade being the primary channel (Rogoff 1996, Goldberg and Knetter 1997). Second, monetary union may greatly increase the amount of trade among...