摘要：
This dissertation explores the relationship between international financial markets, financial frictions, and the real economy. In particular, the dissertation focuses on the role of the United States of America (US) as the key country in the global financial architecture. The research presented here advances the study of international finance and macroeconomics by analyzing how the combination of two factors, the greater financial development of the US and financing frictions, leads to the special global roles of the US funding markets and the US dollar. In the first Chapter of the dissertation, I develop a model of financial intermediation in a closed economy, which is also the key building block of the open economy analysis in the second Chapter. In an economy with savers and financial intermediaries where financing frictions are present, the state of the financial sector becomes the key state variable. The financing frictions, modeled as the limited enforceability of deposit contracts, prevent capital from flowing freely from savers to the financial intermediaries that ultimately allocate capital to productive real assets. When financial intermediaries are well capitalized, their capital acts as a safety buffer for potential investment losses and, consequently, financing frictions are alleviated. In this state of the world, financial markets closely resemble those of the standard frictionless asset pricing framework. When, on the other hand, intermediaries are poorly capitalized, concerns for potential losses of capital disrupt the financing markets. In this state of the world, capital does not flow smoothly from savers into productive assets via financial intermediaries. In general, risky assets' prices fall and their volatility increases, thus replicating typical features of financial crises. Interestingly, these effects are highly non-linear. In the second Chapter, I provide a framework for understanding the global financial architecture as an equilibrium out
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