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Call for Papers

“Geopolitical Risk, Catastrophic Events, and Financial Stability”

Over the past decade, geopolitical risk (GPR) has emerged as a central determinant of macro-financial dynamics, reshaping how economists and finance scholars conceptualize systemic risk. A growing body of empirical literature demonstrates that GPR captures not only political tensions and military conflicts, but also the likelihood of rare, high-impact events consistent with the notion of catastrophic risk and "rare disasters" (Caldara and Iacoviello, 2022; Foglia et al., 2025; Salisu et al., 2021). In this sense, GPR increasingly functions as a high-frequency proxy for tail risk in modern asset pricing and macro-finance frameworks.

Crucially, geopolitical risk can no longer be treated as an exogenous disturbance to financial systems. Recent evidence suggests it has become a persistent and endogenous component of systemic risk, embedded in financial markets, institutions, and macroeconomic processes (Pulawska et al, 2026). At the same time, advances in machine learning and data-driven methods are opening new avenues for modeling complex risk structures and forecasting extreme events (Rao et al., 2025).

This Special Issue brings together theoretical and empirical research at the intersection of geopolitical risk, catastrophic events, and financial stability. The six thematic areas outlined below reflect the scope of these challenges and the range of questions they raise for researchers and policymakers.

Research Themes

  • 1. GPR as a Driver of Systemic Risk: Geopolitical risk amplifies systemic risk in banking sectors, particularly in emerging economies. The relationship is endogenous; macroeconomic conditions in major economies also shape the intensity of global GPR.
  • 2. Financial Fragmentation and the Global Financial Cycle: Geopolitical tensions reduce diversification opportunities and increase capital flow volatility, raising the probability of sudden stops in emerging and developing economies.
  • 3. Firms under Geopolitical Risk: Geopolitical uncertainty reduces firm profitability and prompts precautionary cash accumulation. Corporate governance, ESG practices, and business group affiliation help mitigate adverse effects.
  • 4. Financial Markets: Spillovers and Asset Pricing GPR raises sovereign CDS spreads and generates contagion effects across equity, foreign exchange, and commodity markets, most pronounced in post-Soviet economies.
  • 5. Global Catastrophic Risks: Pandemics, natural disasters, climate change, and cyberthreats destabilize financial systems in ways that extend beyond conventional risk frameworks.
  • 6. Governance and Systemic Resilience: Institutional capacity to learn from crises remains limited. Effective responses require institutional reform, improved crisis communication, and cross-sector coordination.

Scope of the Special Issue

This Special Issue invites high-quality theoretical and empirical contributions that deepen our understanding of how geopolitical and catastrophic risks emerge, propagate, and affect financial systems, as well as their implications for policy and systemic resilience.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to: Asset pricing under geopolitical and catastrophic risk; Systemic risk and financial stability; Corporate responses to geopolitical uncertainty; Financial fragmentation and global capital flows; Energy and commodity markets under geopolitical stress; Climate-related financial risks and sustainability; Cyber risk and financial system resilience; Policy responses to global catastrophic threats.

References

  • Caldara, D., Iacoviello, M. (2022). Measuring Geopolitical Risk. American Economic Review. https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.20191823
  • Foglia, M., Plakandaras, V., Gupta, R., Bouri, E. (2025). Rare disasters and multilayer spillovers between volatility and skewness in international stock markets over a century of data: The role of geopolitical risk. International Review of Economics and Finance. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.iref.2025.104183
  • Pulawska, K., Sikora, A., Snarska, M., & Strzelczyk, W. (2026). Macro risks and their impact on insurer stock prices: Analyzing climate, geopolitical, and cybersecurity risks. Research in International Business and Finance. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ribaf.2025.103201
  • Salisu, A.A., Pierdzioch, C., Gupta, R. (2021). Geopolitical risk and forecastability of tail risk in the oil market: Evidence from over a century of monthly data. Energy. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2021.121333
  • Rao, A., Sharma, G.D., Tiwari, A.K., (...), Dev, D. (2025) Crude oil Price forecasting: Leveraging machine learning for global economic stability. Technological Forecasting and Social Change. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2025.124133

Submission Guidelines

We invite submissions of high-quality research papers aligned with the scope of this theme. All manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer review. There are no submission or publication fees.

Deadline for submissions: September 30, 2026

Expected publication: December 2026

Please follow the journal’s submission guidelines

Guests Editors:

dr hab. Katarzyna Byrka-Kita, prof. US
Email:

dr hab. Michał Kałdoński, prof. UEP
Email:

“Financial Resilience in the Age of Technological Change: Innovation, Adaptation, and Digital Transformation”

Technological change is reshaping financial institutions, markets, and the broader architecture of financial intermediation (Thakor, 2020). Digital transformation, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, open banking, platform-based finance, distributed ledger technologies, and data-driven business models are transforming the delivery of financial services, risk management, and value creation (Feyen et al., 2021; Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, 2024). While these developments create opportunities for greater efficiency, personalization, inclusion, risk monitoring, and supervisory effectiveness, they also raise important concerns regarding operational resilience, cyber risk, model risk, third-party dependencies, market concentration, regulatory arbitrage, and the speed at which shocks may spread through the financial system (Financial Stability Board, 2025). Whether, on balance, technological change makes the financial system more resilient or more fragile remains an open empirical and theoretical question.

Financial resilience can be understood as the stability of the financial sector as a whole (Anand et al., 2013; Bui et al., 2017), the resilience of individual financial organizations (Vallascas and Keasey, 2012; Duchek, 2020), and the strategic capacity of financial institutions to adapt business models, competencies, governance structures, and revenue sources to technological change (Gomber et al., 2017; Warner and Wäger, 2019). Contributions that bridge these different dimensions of resilience—including how firm-level adaptation aggregates into system-level stability or fragility—are of particular interest.

This Special Issue invites theoretical and empirical research on how technological change affects financial resilience, organizational adaptation, financial stability, competitiveness, and long-term value creation in the financial sector.

Research Themes

  • 1. Technological Change and Organizational Resilience: How does technological change affect the resilience, adaptability, and continuity of financial institutions?
  • 2. Digital Transformation and Financial Stability:How do digital transformation and new intermediation channels influence systemic risk, the speed of shock transmission, and the overall stability of the financial sector?
  • 3. Artificial Intelligence in Risk Management and Supervision: How do AI and data-driven technologies reshape risk management, governance, and strategic decision-making in financial institutions? How do these developments impact financial supervision?
  • 4. Digital Innovation and Value Creation: How do digital technologies enable new business models, revenue streams, customer value, and competitive advantage in finance?
  • 5. Digital Competencies and Resilient Organizations: How do employees’ digital skills, organizational learning, and technology adoption capabilities strengthen the resilience of financial institutions?
  • 6. Innovation, Competitiveness, and Stability: How does innovation affect competition, market structure, strategic adaptation, incumbent business models, and the long-term stability of financial institutions and markets?
  • 7. Regulation and Policy Responses: What are the design features and effects of the emerging regulatory architecture (e.g., DORA, the EU AI Act, MiCA), and how do they address issues of regulatory arbitrage, proportionality, and supervisory capacity?

Methods

We welcome contributions employing a wide range of methodologies, including: theoretical and analytical modeling; econometric analysis of bank-, firm-, and market-level data; network and agent-based approaches to contagion and runs; machine-learning and text-based methods; natural experiments; comparative institutional analysis; and rigorous qualitative or case-based research.

References

  • Anand, K., Gai, P., Kapadia, S., et al. (2013). A network model of financial system resilience. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 85, 219–235. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2012.04.006
  • Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. (2024). Digitalisation of Finance. Bank for International Settlements.
  • Bui, C., Scheule, H., & Wu, E. (2017). The value of bank capital buffers in maintaining financial system resilience. Journal of Financial Stability, 33, 23–40. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jfs.2017.10.006
  • Duchek, S. (2020). Organizational resilience: a capability-based conceptualization. Business Research, 13, 215–246. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40685-019-0085-7
  • Feyen, E., Natarajan, H., & Saal, M. (2021). Fintech and the Future of Finance: Market and Policy Implications. World Bank Group. https://doi.org/10.1596/978-1-4648-1914-8
  • Financial Stability Board. (2025). Monitoring Adoption of Artificial Intelligence and Related Vulnerabilities in the Financial Sector. FSB.
  • Gomber, P., Koch, J.-A., & Siering, M. (2017). Digital Finance and FinTech: current research and future research directions. Journal of Business Economics, 87, 537–580. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11573-017-0852-x
  • Thakor, A. V. (2020). Fintech and banking: What do we know? Journal of Financial Intermediation, 41, Article 100833. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jfi.2019.100833
  • Vallascas, F., & Keasey, K. (2012). Bank resilience to systemic shocks and the stability of banking systems: Small is beautiful. Journal of International Money and Finance, 31, 1745–1776. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jimonfin.2012.03.011
  • Warner, K. S. R., & Wäger, M. (2019). Building dynamic capabilities for digital transformation: An ongoing process of strategic renewal. Long Range Planning, 52, 326–349. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lrp.2018.12.001

Submission Guidelines

We invite submissions of high-quality research papers aligned with the scope of this theme. All manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer review. There are no submission or publication fees.

Deadline for submissions: January 31, 2027

Expected publication: July 2027

Please follow the journal’s submission guidelines

Guests Editors:

Prof. Łukasz Hardt
Email:

Dr hab. Jacek Jastrzebski, prof. UW
Email:

Dr Katarzyna Niewińska
Email: