Does Central Bank Communication Matter in Emerging European Markets? Evidence from Poland

Abstract

We analyze the impact of monetary policy communication of the National Bank of Poland (NBP), i.e. NBP announcements of interest rates changes and NBP announcements of new macroeconomic figures, on the financial market in Poland in its two main segments: the foreign exchange market and the stock market, and we provide evidence on how they react to public information released by the NBP. In particular, we are interested in the uncertainty (i.e. risk) effects and the wealth (i.e. return) effects of NBP communication, i.e. whether the NBP announcements had any influence on stock and foreign exchange returns and on the activity of those two markets. Using ARCH methodology, we document negative effects in the conditional variance of ARCH models of WIG index volume of trade and WIG returns and PLN/USD bid-ask spread and PLN/USD returns, suggesting the existence of calming effects of NBP communication with financial markets on the changes of their activity. The evidence presented in our study indicates that the NBP announcements had stabilizing effects on stock and foreign exchange markets in Poland.