Another history of global financial markets: Local stock market integration since 1913 from a network perspective

Abstract

We examine local and global equity market integration since 1900 using network methods. The analysis uncovers a new stylised fact about equity market integration over the past 120 years. Local equity market integration generally increases over the entire sample period. This finding is at odds with much of the existing literature that describes long‐run market integration as following a U‐shape pattern. Global stock market integration peaks in 1913 followed by disintegration during the Great Depression and Bretton Woods periods. Then it rebounds and achieves the highest level of integration during the recent period of globalisation that began in the early 1970s. We argue that this U‐shape pattern is the by‐product of the interaction of the network effects of the monotonic decrease in local distances (decrease in information costs, accelerated in the past decades) and network connectivity (which varies inversely with the control over international financial transactions).