We identify periods of mildly explosive dynamics and collapses in the stock markets of 18 major countries during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. We find statistical evidence of instability transmission from the Chinese stock market to all other markets. The recovery is heterogeneous and generally non-explosive.

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We analyze the second-moment properties of the components of international capital flows and their relationship to business cycle variables (output, investment, and real interest rate) in 22 industrial and emerging countries. Total inward flows are procyclical with respect to all three macro variables. Net outward flows are countercyclical with respect to output and investment in most industrial and emerging countries. Disaggregated inward flows positively comove with output in industrial countries and with investment and the real interest rate in the G7 economies. Inward foreign direct investment is the only non-procyclical type of inward capital flows (with respect to output) in the developing economies. Formal statistical tests based on nonparametric bootstrap techniques detect significant variance increases in all G7 countries' disaggregated capital flows over exogenous and endogenously estimated breaks.

We analyze the second-moment properties of the components of international capital flows and their relationship to business cycle variables (output, investment, and real interest rate) in 22 industrial and emerging countries. Total inward flows are procyclical with respect to all three macro variables. Net outward flows are countercyclical with respect to output and investment in most industrial and emerging countries. Disaggregated inward flows positively comove with output in industrial countries and with investment and the real interest rate in the G7 economies. Inward foreign direct investment is the only non-procyclical type of inward capital flows (with respect to output) in the developing economies. Formal statistical tests based on nonparametric bootstrap techniques detect significant variance increases in all G7 countries' disaggregated capital flows over exogenous and endogenously estimated breaks.

We investigate the pairwise correlations of 11 U.S. xed income yield spreads over a sample that includes the Great Financial Crisis of 2007-2009. Using cross-sectional methods and nonparametric bootstrap breakpoint tests, we characterize the crisis as a period in which pairwise correlations between yield spreads were systematically and signi cantly altered in the sense that spreads comoved with one another much more than in normal times. We nd evidence that, for almost half of the 55 pairs under investigation, the crisis has left spreads much more correlated than they were previously. This evidence is particularly strong for liquidity-and default-riskrelated spreads, long-term spreads, and the spreads that were most likely directly a ected by policy interventions.