Summary:
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.