Integration of the foreign exchange markets of the selected EU new member states

The article deals with the evaluation of the foreign exchange market integration of the new EU Member States - the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia. The main aim of this paper is to introduce and to test, if the Central-European sentiment on the foreign exchange market exists and how strong it is. We apply the analysis of harmonizing (by means of standard and rolling correlation analysis), the concept of beta-convergence (through the use of the standard and rolling correlation analysis, state-space model and panel regression analysis), which could identify the speed of financial integration and the concept of sigma-convergence, which could extrapolate the degree of financial integration. We find that from the entry to the EU in May 2004 the mutual relationship with Central-European currencies relative to euro significantly increase.

Keywords: exchange rate, financial integration, panel data, state-space model, analysis of alignment, beta-convergence, sigma-convergence