The Russian invasion of Ukraine and the exchange rate of the Polish zloty: A fallacy of monetary autonomy?

Abstract

We use the Twitter application programming interface to construct a novel indicator capturing the varying perceptions of geopolitical risk related to the war in Ukraine. We show that the Twitter variable is a statistically significant determinant of the EUR/PLN exchange rate following the invasion. We estimate that the war in Ukraine was responsible for an increase in the EUR/PLN exchange rate of about 5.0% in the first 2 weeks following its breakout and that the weakening of PLN contributed to an increase of headline inflation in Poland by about 0.33 percentage points. Our findings suggest that monetary policy autonomy can be substantially constrained due to conflicts in nearby countries. Therefore, they provide an argument for Poland in seeking Eurozone membership as a way to contain the impact of geopolitical factors on exchange rate volatility, which is likely to remain at play in the longer run.