Financial Factors, Rare Disasters and Macroeconomic Fluctuations

Abstract

This thesis attempts to shed light on the role of financial factors and vulnerabilities in shaping macroeconomic fluctuations. It contributes to the literature that integrates financial factors into the real business cycle paradigm by introducing asymmetries and disaster risk in financial conditions, reflecting the low probability of sharp worsening in financial conditions that is found in data. The introduction of disaster risk in this thesis is done within a small open economy modeling framework. In this sense, while the trigger of disaster events is not endogenized, the emphasis is on exploring the role of financial frictions (such as working capital requirements or time-varying leverage) and of modeling features (e.g. variable capital utilization, the use of imported intermediate inputs, etc.) in affecting the propagation mechanisms when external conditions show a rare disaster pattern.