Theoretical models of financial crises: the role of collateral

What is the collateral? Which is its role in the economy? Which is its role during ?nancial market crises? The objective of this thesis is to ?nd an answer to these questions, supporting them with a historical and theoretical analysis. The core of my work is based on the paper by Caballero and Krishnamurthy, titled `International and domestic collateral constraints in a model of emerging market crises' , which explains the role of collateral during the Asian ?nancial market crisis. I develop two models, one extending theirs in an open economy con- text and one using their assumptions to show a framework in which collateral determines the level of investments of an economy.