In the economic sphere, markets are less and less segmented by national boundaries. Both buyers and sellers face wider horizons of opportunity, and by the same token new sources of competition. Markets of the third type are the subject of my discussion of financial globalization. The speakers who follow will have much to say about other kinds of markets and other aspects of globalization. Trades of financial assets are the easiest to globalize.
Nothing is involved beyond exchanging pieces of paper or making entries in electronic ledgers.
The communications revolution makes transactions easy, fast, and cheap. No movements of physical goods or of people are involved. No frontiers have to be crossed. The only barriers are national regulations. As these have been liberalized in country after country, international financial flows have flooded into national securities markets and banking systems all over the world.