The monetary autonomy of Finland: What can the time series analysis tell us?

The effectiveness of domestic monetary policy under fixed exchange rates is highly dependent on the response of the foreign exchange reserves to a monetary expansion or contraction. Domestic monetary conditions, in turn, can be expected to be subject to shocks emerging from changes in reserves. These shocks can badly harm stabilization objectives if they are not neutralized. This paper analyzes the monetary autonomy of the Finnish economy during the 1970's and early 1980's using a data-oriented approach suggested byGeweke. A purely empiristic interpretation of the results would indicate that the degree of monetary autonomy is high and increasing over time. However, incorporating theoretical considerations turns this conclusion upside down. The Finnish financial system has in all likelihood experienced structural changes that have reduced the potential for effective monetary policies. On the other hand, we do not find any evidence of strong effects of reserve shocks on the domestic money and credit markets, though the importance of such shocks may have increased slightly. Methodologically, the analysis highlights that economic theory is needed in organizing empirical observations even when the point of departure is data-oriented.     

Strategies and boundaries: Subcontracting in construction

A central concern in studying organization environment relationships has been the issue of how boundaries of organizational activity are defined and altered. A specific organizational response that pertains to the issue of boundaries is subcontracting. Construction is one industry where subcontracting is used extensively. Eccles' (1981a) study shows, however, that there is great variation in the subcontracting practices of contractors. This paper reports an exploratory study on the possible determinants of the extent of subcontracting by the construction firm.     

Day trading and stock price volatility

When an investor buys and sells the same stock on the same day, he is said to have made a day trade. Using the trading records of Finnish traders, this paper examines whether day trading is related to volatility of stock prices. I find a strong positive time-series relation between the number of day trades by individual investors and intraday volatility among heavily day traded stocks. This effect is robust after controlling for a previously documented volume–volatility relation. The result suggests that the joint hypothesis of price pressure and volatility induced day trading dominates the liquidity effects of day trading.     

International Evidence on Risk Taking by Banks Around the Global Financial Crisis

This study models the risks of commercial banks from the United States and developed, emerging, and frontier countries while controlling for bank- and country-specific variables within a panel framework. Bank risk is measured by both the traditional Z-score and a composite bank risk index proposed by the authors. The findings suggest that even though the riskiness of all banks from different country groups increased following the financial crisis, the magnitude of the change is not the same across groups. During the post-crisis period, banks in developed, emerging, and frontier countries experienced a smaller increase in their risk compared to their counterparts in the United States. This article provides support for the claim that banks in emerging and frontier countries have experienced the effects of the financial crisis to a lesser extent compared to those in the United States.     

Cycles in the IPO market

We develop a model in which time-varying real investment opportunities lead to time-varying adverse selection in the market for IPOs. The model is consistent with several stylized facts known about the IPO market: economic expansions are associated with a dramatic increase in the number of firms going public, which is in turn positively correlated with underpricing. Adverse selection is procyclical in the sense that dispersion in unobservable quality across firms should be more pronounced during booms. Taking the premise that uncertainty is resolved (and thus private information revealed) over time, we test this hypothesis by looking at long-run abnormal returns and delisting rates. Consistent with the model, we find (a) greater cross-sectional return variance, and (b) higher incidence of delisting for hot-market IPOs.     

Determining the requirements of families of children with special needs

This study aims to determine the requirements of parents of children with special needs and the factors that influence those requirements by using the “family needs survey” developed by Bailey and Simeonsson (The Journal of Special Education 22(1):117–127, 1988) adapted for Turkish researchers by Cavkaytar et al. (Ankara Üniversitesi Eğitim Bilimleri Fakültesi Özel Eğitim Dergisi 15(2):1–12, 2014). In the study the survey model was used to investigate the current requirements of parents. The population of the study consisted of families whose children are currently in one of five special education centres or one of four special education and rehabilitation centres which function under the Ministry of Education in the TRNC in the academic year 2015–2016. With the aim of reaching the whole of the population, no sampling methods were used in the research. The analysis was conducted with research evaluation instruments distributed to a total of 279 participants within the scope of the study and with the collection of 116 of the instruments. Welch’s t test, Welch/Anova and Gabriel and Hochber’s GT2 tests were used to analyse the data. The majority of the participants consisted of mothers and middle-aged parents. In general, the families’ response to the FNS scale was that were unsure of their requirements. However, they had a need for information.

     

Impact of ICT on the productivity of the firm: evidence from Turkish manufacturing

This paper aims to explore the impact of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) on labor productivity growth in Turkish manufacturing. This is the first attempt at exploring the impact of ICT on productivity in Turkish manufacturing at the firm level. The analysis is based on firm level data obtained from Turkish Statistical Institute (TURKSTAT) and covers the period from 2003 to 2012. The data used in the analysis includes all firms employing 19+ workers in Turkish manufacturing industry. Growth accounting results show that the contributions of conventional and ICT capital to value added growth are not significantly different from each other. On the other hand, results based both on static (fixed-effects) and dynamic panel data analysis highlight the positive influence on firms’ productivity exerted by ICT capital. The findings show that the impact of ICT capital on productivity is larger by about 25 to 50% than that of conventional capital. This contribution of ICT capital is higher than that of non-ICT capital for small sized and low-tech firms. Our findings imply that investing in ICT capital increases firm productivity by increasing the productivity of labor and also that convention growth accounting approaches may not be adequate to identify such linkages.     

Accreditation in a differentiated duopoly

Accreditation is increasingly important worldwide; however, some industries have higher accreditation rates than others. We suggest a duopoly model to discuss how market characteristics affect the incentive for firms to seek accreditation. The discussion relates to the effects accreditation might have on the costs and demands in the markets, the degree of product differentiation (addressing both substitutable and complementary goods), type of competition (various Cournot and Bertrand games), and welfare for society. It follows that markets with high accreditation rates are either characterized by fierce competition (price competition in substitutable goods) or by a high degree of coordination (complementarity).