Economic and Financial Reports Volume 03/2001

The euro and capital markets: A new era

This paper is organised as follows. Section 2 examines the forces that have changed the financial landscape at the world level over the last two decades. Section 3 summarises the arguments of how the introduction of the euro should add to these broader economic forces in reshaping euro financial markets. Section 4 verifies whether the actual experience since January 1999 has been in line with the ex ante expectations. Most of the analysis will be based on developments of the bond market. Section 5 offers some conclusions.