A remarkable feature of the period since 1970 has been the patterns of rapid and turbulent change in financing behaviour and financial structure in many advanced countries. This book explores, in theoretical and empirical terms, the nature of the relationships between the underlying phenomena--levels and changes in debt, vulnerability to default in the corporate and household sectors, and systematic risk in the financial sector. The book focuses on the generality of this phenomena--whether similar patterns are observable in certain countries, as well as in the international capital markets themselves. Emphasis is placed to the importance of the nature and evolution of financial structure to the genesis of instability. Given the international scope of the analysis, the work is germane to the study of the development of financial systems in all advanced countries, as well as the euromarkets.