Determinants of US financial fragility conditions

The recent financial crisis has highlighted the fragility of the US financial system under several respects. In this paper the properties of a summary index of financial fragility, timely capturing changes in credit and liquidity risk, distress in the mortgage market, and corporate default risk, is investigated over the 1986-2010 period. We find that observed fluctuations in the financial fragility index can be attributed to identified (global and domestic) macroeconomic (20%) and financial disturbances (40% to 50%), over both short- and long-term horizons, as well as to oil-supply shocks in the long-term (25%). Overall, differenty from financial shocks, macroeconomic disturbances have generally had a stabilizing effect.