This book volume brings together carefully selected scholarly works covering four inter-related topic areas in international finance. The first section deals with the efficacy and determinants of central bank currency interventions by the Bank of Japan and the Reserve Bank of Australia, the two of the most active central banks in the currency markets in the 1990s and the 2000s. This is followed by chapters that investigate the nature of information processing following domestic and foreign macroeconomic announcements. The third section provides the investigations into the evolving nature of financial market integration and information leadership of major financial centers. The final section presents the studies on the role sovereign credit ratings play in attracting international capital investments.

The comprehensive empirical evidence provided in this book helps readers understand how international financial markets have evolved in their linkages and how information processing occurs in relation to sovereign rating events and other information arrivals.