Uluslararası finansal entegrasyonu: Karmaşık bir ağ yaklaşımı

The concept of financial integration is not new and globalization itself is not a novel phenomenon. International financial integration was mainly accelerated due to removal of barriers on international capital flows, deregulation policies, technological evolution, increased international cooperation, etc. Still, the world is far from being fully integrated and international financial network clearly demonstrates a core-periphery structure. This thesis employs a network approach to explore typology and evolution of international financial network. Main data source is Coordinated Portfolio Investment Survey (CPIS) published by IMF and covers a period from 2004 until 2015. 70 countries are included in the analysis and sample is restricted due to data availability. Key network parameters used to assess financial web patterns and evolution are: network density, clustering coefficient, degree centrality, betweenness centrality, closeness centrality and hubs & authorities centrality. Applying a complex network analysis, main purpose of this thesis is to map and explain the typology and evolution of international financial integration. Empirical results of this thesis show that while there is an increasing number of countries holding geographically diversified portfolio of assets issued by non-residents, most influencing country in the financial network is the USA. Japan, UK, Luxembourg, France and Germany as well appear to be influential in the network owning large portfolios of internationally issued financial assets. In general, this thesis' findings are in line with previous studies considering financial network as a core-periphery structure, with a small number of countries located in the core of network and maintaining intensive relation both among each other and with the rest of network. On the other side, countries classified as periphery tend to establish relations with core countries and have less incentive to connect with other countries positioned in the periphery layer. Lastly, unlike expected, global and European financial crises did not significantly change position of countries in the international financial network.