From a simple (theoretical) growth argument, financial integration enables capitalscarce countries to raise capital inflows with positive effects on investment and on the speed of convergence. We first show that in a complete markets neoclassical growth model that although financial openness increases welfare, its quantitative effects are limited. However, we also show that when agents face uninsurable idiosyncratic risks on income and borrowing constraints the welfare implications of financial liberalization are sizeable. For instance, the average welfare of a typical emerging market economy that switches from financial autarky to perfect capital mobility would increase by roughly 7.5 percent of consumption equivalent. This is about 5 times larger than the welfare gains of the same policy under the complete markets environment. Finally, we also provide a rationality of why such large welfare gains might not be exploited, since the average welfare gain hides important distributional implications. In our calibration, the median agent is in favor of international financial integration, but if wealth positively affects the pivotal voter such reform might not be implemented, since richer agents have a vested interest on capital market closeness.