FutureSelf: Emerging digitized life patterns and a personal future simulation system

Unique information sources, available and accessible in digital networked environments, can be used as a data set for the extrapolation of an individual's potential futures. Based on an interactive analysis process, a carefully crafted system using artificial intelligence, data mining processes and behavior adaptive features can generate contextualized interactive personal future simulations in the form of interconnected micro-future scenarios. Micro-future scenarios provide context-sensitive information, alternative future paths and recommendations based on an individual's personal circumstances and her environment. The emerging future narrative can be delivered effectively by using different communication channels and methods in digital environments. The system aims to enhance an individual's awareness of the consequences of her existence by connecting her personal and social actions to a wider social, cultural, political, economical and ecological context.     

Transparency of the organization and activity of carbon funds

ABSTRACT

Public and mixed carbon funds buy carbon credits on behalf of public authorities and make use of public money, thus there is a need for clear information regarding their operations. The paper presents a new transparency index for the organization and activity of carbon funds that takes account of information disclosed via the internet. The construction of the index is based on the Linaburg-Maduell Transparency Index for sovereign wealth funds. The empirical study demonstrates that public and mixed carbon funds varied significantly in terms of their transparency but, in general, mixed carbon funds performed slightly better than public carbon funds.     

The Finnish Corporate Income Tax Reform and the Financial Strategy of Firms: A General Equilibrium Approach

This paper simulates the effects of the recent Finnish corporate tax reform with a computable general equilibrium model. It shows that the impact of the reform on the capital stock depends on the reactions of firms. If the financial strategy is changed to prefer dividend distribution and share issues, the cost of capital falls and the capital stock increases. On the other hand, if the criterion of financial policy is to minimise the welfare loss of current shareholders, the earlier financial behaviour should be continued. In that case,the induced higher cost of capital leads to a lower capital stock. The overall welfare evaluation of the tax reform is not sensitive to the regime shift: the reform should not have been implemented. This is because the increase in interest income taxation distorts saving decisions, expands the net foreign debt of the economy and weakens the terms of trade.     

The complexity of safety in wilderness guiding in Finnish Lapland

This article examines how safety is understood and practised by wilderness guides leading nature excursions with international customers in Finnish Lapland. Commercial nature tourism services in Lapland are not considered adventure-oriented since risk-taking is not an integral part of the guided services. The study shows that even though perceived as low-risk activities, risks are present in a significant part of the everyday actions in commercial nature tourism services. Thus, commercial nature tourism forms a rich context to study the sustainability of contemporary safety practices since it forms a specific, guide-dependent sector of the tourism industry. The discussion further underlines the complexity of safety issues within the industry and the importance of holistic approaches.     

The Finnish Pension System and Its Future Challenges

Intereconomics - A specific feature in the Finnish pension system is rule-based preparation for mortality change. The earned pension capital is adjusted to life expectancy and the lowest age limit...     

Pension Prefunding, Ageing, and Demographic Uncertainty

Pension prefunding can be used to smooth contribution rates in economies where ageing will increase pension expenditure. But how extensive should prefunding be in a defined benefit pension system when there is considerable uncertainty concerning future mortality, fertility, and migration? We study the prefunding rules in the Finnish earnings-related pension system with an OLG simulation model. The results show that increasing the degree of prefunding could yield a more even intergenerational outcome and make future generations' position better, but it is quite possible to overshoot and harm current generations too much. Making the degree of prefunding fertility-dependent appears to be a useful alternative. With declining fertility, current large cohorts would pay modestly increased contributions. The accumulated funds, however, will be huge in relation to the wage bills of smaller future cohorts.     

Co-movement of oil and stock prices in the GCC region: A wavelet analysis

This paper examines the short term and long term dependencies between stock market returns and OPEC basket oil returns for the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates) and two non-oil producing countries in the region (Egypt and Jordan), over the period 2002–2011. We utilize the wavelet coherency methodology in our empirical analyses. The empirical evidence indicates lack of market dependencies in the short term in these countries, indicating that oil and stock returns are not strongly linked in this interval. However, we show that oil returns and the stock markets returns co-move over the long term. The results also suggest that the long term dependencies are much stronger for OPEC oil returns and Jordan stock market returns relative to OPEC oil returns and Egypt stock market returns, implying a variation in the dependencies between oil prices and stock markets across countries. We further note an increasing strength in the market dependencies after 2007, signifying enhanced diversification benefit for investors in the short term relative to the long term.     

Integration of 22 emerging stock markets: A three-dimensional analysis

We apply the three-dimensional analysis of wavelet coherency to examine the integration of 22 emerging stock markets with the U.S. market. We find a high degree of co-movement at relatively lower frequencies between the U.S. and the 22 individual emerging markets. Our results show that the strength of co-movement, however, differs by country. For example, we report a high degree of co-movement between the U.S. and Brazil, Mexico and Korea, but low co-movement with and Egypt and Morocco. Our analyses also document a general change in the pattern of the market relationship after 2006, where we detect co-movements at relatively higher frequencies. Co-movement at the highest frequencies is, however, weak for fluctuations with duration less than a year. Our findings imply that investing selectively in emerging markets may provide significant diversification benefits which, invariably, depend on the investment horizon.