After the Golden Age, Italy experienced increasing difficulties in adjusting its economy to the changing external context and to the requirements for sustaining catch-up growth at a higher level of economic development. The adjustment issue is common to advanced countries but the difficulties...

The process of European monetary integration has prompted interest in the study of differences in financial systems and their consequences for monetary transmission mechanisms. This paper analyses the case of a monetary union composed of countries with heterogeneous "credit channels". In order...