Institutional Channels of Geopolitical Risk Transmission to Foreign Exchange Volatility: Mixed-Frequency Models and Externally Instrumented Local Projections

  • Unique Paper ID: 205689
  • Volume: 13
  • Issue: 1
  • PageNo: 8241-8253
  • Abstract:
  • Why do geopolitical risk shocks propagate with four to five times greater force to emerging-market currencies than to developed-market currencies? We develop a theoretical model showing that the exchange rate variance response to geopolitical risk is inversely proportional to a country's composite institutional buffer—comprising central bank independence, reserve adequacy, and the foreign-currency debt burden—and test this prediction using a unified four-model econometric strategy. As the primary estimation framework, GARCH-MIDAS-X models correctly handle the mixed-frequency mapping from monthly geopolitical risk to daily exchange rate returns, overcoming the temporal aggregation bias in prior GARCH-X studies. A heterogeneous autoregressive realised volatility (HAR-RV) panel with continuous institutional interaction terms provides the primary cross-country evidence. For identification, we construct a geographic distance- and trade-adjusted external geopolitical risk instrument—a Bartik-type measure that isolates globally transmitted geopolitical shocks orthogonal to each country's domestic macroeconomic conditions—and embed it within two-stage local projections (2SLS-LP). The first-stage F-statistic of 18.4 indicates a strong instrument; 2SLS-LP impulse responses are virtually identical to OLS-LP responses, allaying reverse-causality concerns for the average currency pair. Applying the Perron-Qu (2010) test to discriminate genuine long memory from structural-break-induced spurious persistence, we confirm fractional integration d > 0.5 for the Russian ruble and Turkish lira, while reclassifying Brazil and South Africa as break-driven rather than long-memory currencies—a corrective finding relative to prior work. Across four geopolitical shock events, emerging-market currencies exhibit 2.7 to 12.1 times larger abnormal volatility than developed-market currencies, with the disparity systematically larger in countries scoring below median on all three institutional dimensions. The GARCH-MIDAS-X model reduces out-of-sample RMSE by 25–40% over 2019–2023, confirmed by Diebold-Mariano tests.

Copyright & License

Copyright © 2026 Authors retain the copyright of this article. This article is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

BibTeX

@article{205689,
        author = {Shrinivas R Patil and Dr. R R Kulkarni and Dr. Prakash Rao KS},
        title = {Institutional Channels of Geopolitical Risk Transmission to Foreign Exchange Volatility: Mixed-Frequency Models and Externally Instrumented Local Projections},
        journal = {International Journal of Innovative Research in Technology},
        year = {2026},
        volume = {13},
        number = {1},
        pages = {8241-8253},
        issn = {2349-6002},
        url = {https://ijirt.org/article?manuscript=205689},
        abstract = {Why do geopolitical risk shocks propagate with four to five times greater force to emerging-market currencies than to developed-market currencies? We develop a theoretical model showing that the exchange rate variance response to geopolitical risk is inversely proportional to a country's composite institutional buffer—comprising central bank independence, reserve adequacy, and the foreign-currency debt burden—and test this prediction using a unified four-model econometric strategy. As the primary estimation framework, GARCH-MIDAS-X models correctly handle the mixed-frequency mapping from monthly geopolitical risk to daily exchange rate returns, overcoming the temporal aggregation bias in prior GARCH-X studies. A heterogeneous autoregressive realised volatility (HAR-RV) panel with continuous institutional interaction terms provides the primary cross-country evidence. For identification, we construct a geographic distance- and trade-adjusted external geopolitical risk instrument—a Bartik-type measure that isolates globally transmitted geopolitical shocks orthogonal to each country's domestic macroeconomic conditions—and embed it within two-stage local projections (2SLS-LP). The first-stage F-statistic of 18.4 indicates a strong instrument; 2SLS-LP impulse responses are virtually identical to OLS-LP responses, allaying reverse-causality concerns for the average currency pair. Applying the Perron-Qu (2010) test to discriminate genuine long memory from structural-break-induced spurious persistence, we confirm fractional integration d > 0.5 for the Russian ruble and Turkish lira, while reclassifying Brazil and South Africa as break-driven rather than long-memory currencies—a corrective finding relative to prior work. Across four geopolitical shock events, emerging-market currencies exhibit 2.7 to 12.1 times larger abnormal volatility than developed-market currencies, with the disparity systematically larger in countries scoring below median on all three institutional dimensions. The GARCH-MIDAS-X model reduces out-of-sample RMSE by 25–40% over 2019–2023, confirmed by Diebold-Mariano tests.},
        keywords = {Geopolitical risk; GARCH-MIDAS; local projections; HAR-RV; institutional transmission; external instrument; emerging markets; long memory JEL Codes: F31, F52, G15, C22, C23},
        month = {June},
        }

Cite This Article

Patil, S. R., & Kulkarni, D. R. R., & KS, D. P. R. (2026). Institutional Channels of Geopolitical Risk Transmission to Foreign Exchange Volatility: Mixed-Frequency Models and Externally Instrumented Local Projections. International Journal of Innovative Research in Technology (IJIRT), 13(1), 8241–8253.

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