A large proportion of international portfolio managers and pension fund trustees allocate their funds in a top-down fashion, first making a decision across countries and/or geographical regions and then selecting securities within the various countries or regions. Similarly, most financial analysts evaluate the health of a company's balance sheet within a national context rather than in comparison with similar companies in other markets. These practices reflect a segregationist view of world capital markets. In a recent trend toward global analysis, however, securities are categorized and/or selected according to their underlying characteristics, not according to the nationality of their market listing. The conventional wisdom, at least as reflected in current practice, seems to be that the level of worldwide capital market integration is not high but is slowly increasing over time. Capital market integration can be defined in at