EMU-related News and Financial Markets in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland

We analyse the impact of news on five financial markets in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland using a newly constructed data set in a GARCH framework. Macroeconomic shocks (on GDP, inflation rate, current account and trade balance) are constructed as deviations from expected values. EMU-related political and fiscal news is captured as news dummies. Macroeconomic shocks significantly affect short-term interest rates and, to a lesser extent, other financial variables. Political and fiscal news has an impact on long-term bond yields and exchange rates. News displayed prominently in our media sources has a greater impact on financial markets than other news and, in addition, the sources of news themselves matter. We also discover asymmetric effects of news within markets. Finally, using a pooled GARCH model we find that macroeconomic shocks have the strongest impact on financial markets in Hungary, while political news has the largest influence in both Hungary and Poland.