In search of marginal environmental valuations — ecosystem services in Finnish forest accounting

There is currently substantial interest in valuing various services provided by different ecosystems. Concurrently economists have ascribed substantial effort on expanding traditional forest accounting systems by environmental services. This paper contributes to curtailing the existing gap between green accounting theory and applications for valuing forest ecosystem services. The multitude of links between forest ecosystem services and economy are characterized by the theoretical model for forest-economy interactions. By utilizing recently updated data we also incorporate empirical value estimates of these services comparable to other goods into Finnish forest accounting system. Finally, we discuss some problems encountered and clarify the interpretation of some value estimates incorporated to national forest account.     

What Drives Quality of Firm Risk Disclosure? : The Impact of a National Disclosure Standard and Reporting Incentives under IFRS

This paper examines the impact of a detailed national disclosure standard on the quality of firms' overall risk reviews under IFRS. We use data from a sample of listed Finnish firms around the introduction of the standard and find that national regulatory bodies have been able to raise the quality of risk disclosure on several dimensions even under IFRS. We find increases in the quantity of risk disclosure with more extensive and more comprehensive information. We do not, however, find a corresponding increase in quantitative disclosures and therefore there is some question regarding the influence of the standard on the substance of the risk information provided. In addition to the coercive effect of the standard, several important reporting incentives, such as firm size, profitability, and foreign listing status are documented. We also find some evidence that the impact of the standard on quality is more pronounced among less profitable firms. Additional findings are that larger firms and firms reporting under the requirements of the SEC disclose more quantitative risk information, and that the quality improvements are permanent in the subsequent years. The findings have implications for standard-setters evaluating different strategies with the aim to increase the quality of the narratives in annual reports.     

Quantitative Easing Forever? Financialisation and the Institutional Legitimacy of the Federal Reserve’s Unconventional Monetary Policy

Scholars of financialisation have argued that the emergence of finance-led grow regimes requires new instruments for effective conduct of economic policy. In this scholarship, central banks have been seen as the most promising actors to utilise one of the most synergetic policies, the maintenance of high and stable prices of financial assets. Since the financial crisis of 2007–8, central banks of the developed world have adopted various unconventional monetary policy measures that serve this function. But will these unconventional measures become institutionally legitimate and institutionalised as conventional practice, as suggested necessary by scholars of financialisation? In this paper, we answer to this question by studying the institutional legitimation of the Federal Reserve’s Quantiative Easing (QE) programmes. We argue that the QE programmes have been legitimated successfully but with institutional legitimation strategies, which cause institutional pressures that question the potential of QE from becoming a regular policy instrument and practice.     

Corporate Real Estate Sale and Leaseback Effect: Empirical Evidence from Europe

Corporate real estate disposals have increased in Europe during the past few years. In this research paper, we study market reactions of publicly traded European companies' real estate sale and leaseback announcements during 1998–2004. This study is one of the first ones to study the sale and leaseback impact on corporate value with a pan‐European data. We find that the sale and leaseback announcements have on average positive impact to firm's value which is in line with the previous studies. However, we also find that the positive effect is mainly caused by the deals with high transaction value to company market value ratio. Smaller transactions do not create on average any abnormal returns. Our results support the hypothesis that the positive sale and leaseback announcement effect is a consequence of revealed hidden value of the company's assets. Thus, sale and leaseback can also be seen as a mechanism for revealing the hidden value of company's assets to the market.     

Assessing the productivity consequences of agri-environmental practices when adoption is endogenous

Journal of Productivity Analysis - We address the general problem of selection bias, an issue endemic to policy analysis when adoption is voluntary, with an empirical application to environmental...     

Profiling the ageing wellness consumers in the retailing context

In the context of retailing, ‘wellness consumption’ cannot be defined by a product or service category, but by shopping motives. As previous research strongly suggests our consumption patterns to be influenced both by age and generational effects, in the current study we explore the wellness orientations of consumers at different ages/belonging to different generations as they manifest in everyday practices, especially in the context of retailing. Drawing on that, we aim to shed light on implications of the population ageing on retailing-related wellness industry. The main focus is on Baby Boomers. Starting with a random sample of 18–75-year-olds (N=1600), we extracted six dimensions connected to different aspects of wellness. Next, the dimensions extracted among aged 18–75 and 55?64 were fed into respective cluster analyses which both yielded seven segments. The differences in the composition of wellness dimensions indicate that age-/generation-specific segmentation is warranted and will return in more accurate estimations of the market potential and more targeted marketing activities. Examination of the parallel typologies enabled us to gain a broader understanding of differences between generations. There was an obvious age-/generation-based pattern in the cluster memberships in the 18–75 sample, all clusters offering different opportunities for the wellness market.     

Techno-economic modeling of value network configurations for public wireless local area access

The growing amount of mobile data traffic increases the demand for local area network deployments, and therefore is likely to have an effect on the mobile communications ecosystem. Several alternative value network configurations exist giving new business opportunities to different actors, but the attractiveness and success of local area access provisioning remains uncertain. This article analyzes the business of public local area access from the point of view of two potential providers: service application providers, i.e. companies whose core business is to provide information and content services in the Internet, and mobile operators. A quantitative techno-economic model is constructed to quantify the costs and required revenues of operating viable public local area access networks. The results show that the revenue requirements vary between public venue types and value network configurations.     

Institutional Path Dependence in Competitive Dynamics: The Case of Paper Industries in Finland and the USA

Prior research on competitive dynamics has failed to offer tools to understand distorted patterns of competition that emerge from distinct institutional and historical contexts. Our analysis suggests that a joint effect of institutional rules, governance structures, and shared cognition plays a pivotal role in firm‐level competitive behavior and capability development. We show how globally significant market positions can result from specific institutional arrangements between firms and governments, especially if coupled with interfirm contractual commitments. Our results call for more attention to these interfirm commitments that are built on formal rules and governmental support, but whose impact they yet exceed. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Physical Search

Unidirectional search is an evolutionarily stable outcome in an economy where homogenous buyers and sellers can either move or stay. It is more efficient than bidirectional search. In unidirectional search, it is more efficient if the more numerous agents move and the less numerous agents stay, than vice versa.     

Determinants of Swap Spreads in a Developing Financial Market: Evidence from Finland

This paper presents empirical evidence on the determinants of swap spreads in Finland using four years of data. Spreads exhibit a significant negative relationship with the amount of fixed rate deposits with banks, which reflects the importance of banks in the Finnish capital markets. Spreads are positively linked to business cycle and market risk factors such as the slope of the yield curve and the volatility of interest rates. The influence of hedging costs has become increasingly important over time, especially in longer dated swaps. A relationship is also observed between swap spreads and the external value of the currency.