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The Impact Of Political Events On Financial Market Volatility: Evidence Using A Markov Switching Process, Ahmed M. Khalid, Gulasekaran Rajaguru

Ahmed Khalid

This paper investigates the impact of political shocks (positive and negative) on financial markets. Using data from Pakistan for the period January 1999 to September 2006, we link ‘a’ political event to the financial market volatility. We use high frequency data from three indicators (currency, stock and money market) of the financial market for empirical estimation. We employ a Markov Switching process to identify the low and high volatility regimes in Pakistan’s financial market and then link these regimes to certain political events. We use data on daily observations of exchange rates, stock prices and interest rates to perform empirical …