This paper studies how within- and cross-country capital market imperfections affect the welfare effects of forming a currency union. The analysis considers a bank-only world where intermediaries compete in Cournot fashion and monitoring and state verification are costly. The first part...

A dynamic stochastic model of a small open economy with a two-level banking intermediation structure, a risk-sensitive regulatory capital regime, and imperfect capital mobility is developed. Firms borrow from a domestic bank and the bank borrows on world capital markets, in both cases subject to...