Using a large sample of cross-border mergers we measure the effect of a change in location on systematic risk. We document a large, widespread, and robust effect. When a target firm's location moves as a result of an international merger, a large part of its systematic risk switches from being related to its home equity market to that of the acquirer. On average the beta of the pooled target and acquirer with respect to the acquirer market increases by 0.155 and the beta with respect to the target market declines by 0.117. This is equivalent to an excess shift of about 0.5 in the target's beta from its home market to that of the acquirer. We test whether the change in systematic risk can be explained by fundamental factors related to changes in the operations of the firm or merger synergy and find that it cannot.

We investigate shifts in correlation patterns among international equity returns at the market level as well as the industry level. We develop a novel bivariate GARCH model for equity returns with a smoothly time-varying correlation and then derive a Lagrange Multiplier statistic to test the constant-correlation hypothesis directly. Applying the test to weekly data from Germany, Japan, the UK and the US in the period 1980-2000, we find that correlations among the German, UK and US stock markets have doubled, whereas Japanese correlations have remained the same. Both dates of change and speeds of adjustment vary widely across countries and sectors.

This timely volume addresses three important recent trends in the internationalization of United States equity markets: extensive market integration through foreign investment and links among stock prices around the world; increasing securitization as countries such as Japan come to rely more than ever before on markets in equities and bonds at the expense of banks; and the opening of national financial systems of newly industrializing countries to international financial flows and institutions, as governments remove capital controls and other barriers. Eight essays examine such issues as the current extent of international market integration, gains to U.S. investors through international diversification, home-country bias in investing, the role of time and location around the world in stock trading, and the behavior of country funds. Other, long-standing questions about equity markets are also addressed, including market efficiency and the accuracy of models of expected returns, with a particular focus on variances, covariances, and the price of risk according to the Capital Asset Pricing Model.

Recent changes in technology, along with the opening up of many regions previously closed to investment, have led to explosive growth in the international movement of capital. Flows from foreign direct investment and debt and equity financing can bring countries substantial gains by augmenting local savings and by improving technology and incentives. Investing companies acquire market access, lower cost inputs, and opportunities for profitable introductions of production methods in the countries where they invest. But, as was underscored recently by the economic and financial crises in several Asian countries, capital flows can also bring risks. Although there is no simple explanation of the currency crisis in Asia, it is clear that fixed exchange rates and chronic deficits increased the likelihood of a breakdown. Similarly, during the 1970s, the United States and other industrial countries loaned OPEC surpluses to borrowers in Latin America. But when the U.S. Federal Reserve raised interest rates to control soaring inflation, the result was a widespread debt moratorium in Latin America as many countries throughout the region struggled to pay the high interest on their foreign loans. International Capital Flows contains recent work by eminent scholars and practitioners on the experience of capital flows to Latin America, Asia, and eastern Europe. These papers discuss the role of banks, equity markets, and foreign direct investment in international capital flows, and the risks that investors and others face with these transactions. By focusing on capital flows' productivity and determinants, and the policy issues they raise, this collection is a valuable resource for economists, policymakers, and financial market participants.

We investigate investor's correlated attention as a determinant of excess stock market comovement. We propose a novel proxy, "co-attention", that measures the correlation in demand for market-wide information across stock markets approximated by the Google Search Volume Index (SVI). Our results reveal significant co-attention driven to some extent by correlated news and fundamentals. Most importantly, we find a positive association between co-attention and excess correlation. This effect is more pronounced in developed economies and during recessions. We fail to document significant effects of correlated news supply on stock markets, lending support to the idea that information demand governs investing decisions. Co-attention is not only induced through international investors but domestic investors as well. Our results provide evidence of attention-induced financial contagion in unrelated economies. International investors' co-attention appears to facilitate volatility transmission indirectly across markets.