Financial integration: the role of tradable and non-tradable goods

This paper examines the potential benefits of financial integration focusing on the role of tradable and non-tradable goods. We construct a new country-level index for tradability of output using disaggregate sector level data on output, imports and exports. Cross-country regressions show that for the overall sample, there is a weak positive interaction of tradibility of output and financial integration. When we focus on those countries within a middle range of institutional development, and thus within the middle range of income per capita, for these countries, the experience of integration is tempered significantly by increasing tradability of output. Sector-level regressions confirm the negative and significant interaction of trade and financial integration for this sample of countries.