International financial integration in perspective: the contemporary period 1980-1993 compared to the gold standard period.

Summary From an analysis of international financial integration - understood here as a process of internationalization of capital leading to an international capital market - which is based on a double method, empirical and historical, the present work has sought to determine, through the ages, the factors explaining the emergence of such a process. This same work has also sought to characterize the importance of this process by assessing its various consequences on the economies of a number of countries. In the end, this work highlights the problems and challenges that the emergence of such a process can generate for the countries in question. From this analysis, one main lesson emerges: regardless of the period, 1870-1914 or 1980-1993, any process is born of the existence of disequilibria within and between countries. It then develops thanks to financial deregulation measures, and its sustainability is paradoxically ensured by different forms of regulation. The present work begins with a detailed empirical analysis of these processes. It then asks whether these processes have led to the emergence of an international capital market, if not a global one, i.e. a perfect financial integration. The answer to this question lies in an in-depth analysis of the positive and negative consequences of international financial integration. Estimates of these consequences constitute possible theoretical measures of the degree of financial integration achieved by countries. The results of these estimates show an increase in the degree of financial integration during these two periods, but no real global market seems to have emerged.