Alternative Models for Clearance and Settlement: The Case of the Single European Capital Market
研究欧洲跨境交易清算与结算中的摩擦如何阻碍金融市场一体化，分析这些成本对投资者交易的影响，对关注欧洲市场整合和投资组合多元化的学者有参考价值。
IN THIS PAPER WE EXAMINE BARRIERS to European financial market integration associated with imperfections and frictions imbedded in the clearance and settlement of cross-border trades. Clearance-and-settlement costs can be viewed as a subset of the transaction costs facing an investor (buyer or seller) in effecting a trade. Total transaction costs can include quote spread measures (see Huang and Stoll 1995), fees, commissions, foreign exchange costs, transfer taxes, and the costs associated with credit and liquidity risks. To date, their effect on the structure and scale of trading has been largely ignored by researchers. Yet in the European context, where most securities trading (especially equities) is still fragmented along national lines, such costs merit particular attention. In recent years, considerable interest has focused on the potential gains from international portfolio diversification (IPD). Specifically, by buying a wide array of international securities, investors can potentially reduce their exposures to both local market risk and local currency risk. This has resulted in a rapid growth of specialized mutual and investment funds (and their managers) seeking to maximize the gains from IPD to institutional and individual investors in their search for efficient portfolios. 1