Financial fragility is the vulnerability of a financial system to a financial crisis.[1] Franklin Allen and Douglas Gale define financial fragility as the degree to which "...small shocks have disproportionately large effects."[2] Roger Lagunoff and Stacey Schreft write, "In macroeconomics, the term "financial fragility" is used...to refer to a financial system's susceptibility to large-scale financial crises caused by small, routine economic shocks."[3]