It goes without saying, however, that as a result of the rapid development of technology, especially in the ICT area, which drastically lowered the cost of the said exchange, the international integration of trade, investment, financial and other services is now more advanced than it has ever been before. The Economic Policy Committee of the European Union 3 points out four factors that have lead to the rapid development of globalisation over the past years: •  multilateral trade liberalisation; the average customs duty has been lowered by ca. 30%  •  successful economic reforms in many developing countries, especially in China and India  •  the technological advancement, especially in the ICT sector and transportation, which has significantly lowered the cost of trade. To give you and example, fees for sea, land and air transportation, telephone calls and satellite calls went down by 21%, 30%, 95% and 88%, respectively. •  the technological advancement has blurred the borderline between what can and what cannot become subject to international trade. Globalisation may create new macroeconomic interdependences to replace the traditional ones that we know from the books on economics. The majority of economists, politicians and investors may still not quite keep at pace with the “seismic changes” that take place in the economy 4 . However, if we really are witnesses to “seismic changes” in the economy, it may be worthwhile to have a closer look and think about their meaning. Globalisation and its impact on the economy may be viewed from different perspectives.
Additionally, an important feature of development of the financial market is the gradual fall in significance of intermediation of the banking sector with a simultaneous increase of significance of the market intermediation 15 . As a consequence, the central bank’s channels of influence on the economy are changing. In the past the bank loan channel was deemed more important; it is now loosing its significance in relative terms. Until recently, the investment rate in the economy was to a large extent dependent on the domestic savings rate, which by the way was contradictory to one of the fundamental assumptions of some economic models of the full integration of capital markets. The economy was featured by the so-called home bias i.e. greater inclination of domestic investors to invest in domestic assets rather than in foreign assets 16 . The latest research 17 suggests that home bias over the past years could have dropped significantly, at least in the OECD countries. The decrease may be attributed to the very  11  Chen N., Imbs J., Scott A. “Competition, Globalization and the Decline of Inflation”, CEPR Discussion Paper No. 4695, 2004. 12  Melick W., Galati G. “The Evolving Inflation Process: an Overview”, BIS Working Paper No 196, 2006. 13  Hannoun H. “Internationalisation of financial services: implications and challenges for central banks”, Conference of the SEACEN Governors Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei Darussalam, 4 March 2006. 14  McKinsey Global Institute, $ Trillion and Counting: Taking Stock of the World’s Capital Markets, February 2005.