An assessment of the current state of government bond market integration in the periphery of the euro area: A study of Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain

Master’s Thesis from the year 2010 in the subject Economics - Finance, grade: 80, University of Brighton, course: International Financial Markets, language: English, abstract: As the European Union emerges from its worst recession since the Second World War, it has to tackle an equally pressing issue: a sovereign debt crisis. Yield spreads in Greece, Portugal, Ireland and Spain have soared. The era of cheap government borrowing and integrated euro area (EA) government bond markets appears to be over, and fractures in EA solidarity are present. This dissertation seeks to update existing literature by assessing the current state of government bond market integration in the EA. Results suggest that many years of financial integration in EA government bond markets has been reversed in a few months, and that the status quo is not sustainable for the peripheral member countries. Unless Greece, Portugal, Ireland and (to a lesser extent) Spain adopt significant microeconomic structural reforms to regain long-lost competitiveness vis-a-vis the EA’s core (notably Germany), whilst at the same time avoid falling back into deep recession, the Euro project will not be able to continue in its current form.