In this dissertation I explore the relationship between the frictions in a country's financial market and its business cycle movements. It is well known that the financial market is far from perfect, and shocks originating in such market could have sizable impact on the real economy. On the other hand, evolvement in the financial market could also be a reflection of the real economy. For example, economic downturn often leads to high borrowing cost for a country in the international financial market. The essays in this dissertation present an analysis of this two-way relationship, both qualitatively and quantitatively. The first essay studies the link between country credit spreads - defined as the difference between a home country's cost of borrowing from the international credit market and the world riskless interest rate - and the domestic business cycle fluctuations. By combining both empirical and theoretical analysis, this essay shows that deteriorating credit markets are both reflections of a declining economy and a major factor that depresses economic activity. This study uses a quarterly dataset over the period 1972Q1 to 2010Q1 for South Korea. The second essay probes the importance of financial shocks in creating business cycles in the United States. It starts from a theoretical dynamic stochastic generating equilibrium model, which identifies positive financial shocks as those that drag down the corporate net worth while raising domestic output. An empirical analysis later uses this property to identify financial shocks and study their importance in creating business cycle movement for the U.S. in the past fifty years. This property is in stark contrast to technological shocks, which raise both corporate net worth and total output.