Credit market imperfections provide the key to understanding many important issues in business cycles, growth and development, and international economics. Recent progress in these areas, however, has left in its wake a bewildering array of individual models with seemingly conflicting results....

This dissertation investigates capital market frictions across three themes. The first theme is sovereign debt. Recent experience in the EU shows that it can be complex to enforce the repayment promises of states. Furthermore, governments are better informed about their repayment capacity than...