A note on consumption correlations and European financial integration

In this paper we use empirical cross-country correlation coefficients of GDP- and private consumption data as a measure of financial integration between the current EU-member states and the central and eastern European accession states. We find, that the so-called consumption correlation puzzle with high output correlations and considerably small(er) consumption correlations (just opposite to the theory of complete financial markets) does also and still exist among European countries, even using data-sets covering most recent time periods. Thus, there seems to be less financial market integration than often expected.