Abstract: This dissertation addresses two questions regarding international financial market integration and financial frictions. Does stock market volatility in a country raise that in other countries? To answer this question, I conduct two types of empirical exercises. I fit a simple bivariate vector augoregressions (VAR), which show a persistent positive response of domestic volatility to a shock in external volatility. In addition, I run two stage least squares on domestic volatility to resolve the problem of an endogenous explanatory variable. Disaster shocks are used as the instrument for external volatility. I find that international spillovers do occur in stock markets. In particular, one standard deviation increase in external volatility raises domestic volatility by at least 0.3 standard deviations. Moreover, I show that disaster shocks are a valid and robust instrument for volatility. To the best of my awareness, this is the first work addressing the issue of endogeneity in international stock markets with instrument variables. The second question asks if fixed costs to using financial intermediation are quantitatively important in explaining income differences across-countries. I introduce fixed costs into an entrepreneurship model with financial frictions where agents are heterogeneous in their financial assets, entrepreneurial ability and labor productivity. I find that the fraction of agents using financial intermediation substantially decreases as fixed costs increase. Fixed costs as low as 11 per cent of typical year's income lower the intermediated population from almost one to one fifth. Fixed costs also reduce accumulation of capital by 20 per cent as they restrict the intermediated population. Lastly, barriers to financial intermediation play an important role in increasing wealth inequality within an economy and across economies. The aforementioned fixed costs raise the wealth Gini index from 0.78 to 0.92 and reduce aggregate income by 10 per cent. That is, the fixed costs alone can explain 10 per cent of income difference between, for example, Belgium and Guyana.