Monetary Integration With or Without Capital Market Integration

Should East Asia include capital market integration as one of its convergence criteria for monetary integration? Monetary integration in the form of currency baskets or a monetary union would be facilitated if the capital markets were well integrated. East Asian markets are segmented and monetary cooperation in East Asia is not moving forward. This paper shows that even before the launch of the European Monetary Union, European markets were not showing visible progress in capital market integration, and that the degree of integration was below the degree of U.S.–Canadian market integration. The results suggest that monetary integration is not necessarily motivated by capital market integration.