Teppo Martikainen

Price and volatility spillovers in Scandinavian stock markets

Abstract New evidence is provided on price and volatility spillovers among the Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, and Finnish stock markets. The impact of good news (market advances) and bad news (market retreats) is described by a multivariate Exponential Generalized Autoregressive Conditionally Heteroskedastic (EGARCH) model. Volatility transmission is asymmetric, spillovers being more pronounced for bad than good news. Significant price and volatility spillovers exist but they are few in number.

Improving Productivity and Quality in Small and Medium Enterprises: Cases and Analysis

At The Time of Writing, All four authors, A. Gunasekaran, P. Okko, T. Martikainen, and p. Yli-oli were with the school of busines studes, University of Vaasa, Finland. In most cases small and medium enterprise prodcue their own product but at the same time they prodcue items for large-scale industries. These create certain interdependencies among SMEs and between them and large-scale industries in order to improve the competitiveness of SEMs in exporting. During recent year large-scale industries have undergone many changes in terms of prodcution concepts such as just-in-time and total-quality-managment and other technologies such as FMs, OPT and CIM with the objective of aligning their busienss, productivity and quality improvement strategies concepts and technologies which have not received adequate atention from SMEs. However, they can play an active role in the integration of various co-operating SMEs in the network and in improving prodcutivity and quality in SMEs. An attempt has been made in this paper to discuss the strategic for improving productivity and quality in SMEs, develop a suitable conceptual model for improving productivity and quality in two Finnish SMEs, taking into account advanced concepts and technologies and various forms of strategic alliances. in addition, a strategic framerwork is offered for improving productivity and quality in SMEs.

Flexible manufacturing systems: An investigation for research and applications☆

Abstract Flexible Manufacturing Systems(s) (FMS) have already proved their great success in a large number of manufacturing industries. Realising the importance of FMS in increasing productivity and quality, an attempt has been made in this paper to review the literature available on FMS with the objective to identify the applications of existing FMS models and future research directions in the areas of FMS.

Waiting line model applications in manufacturing

Improving manufacturing and attaining manufacturing excellence to gain competitive advantage has attracted a lot of attention in the last few years. Many manufacturing operations and many of the technological advances in manufacturing systems like FMS, AGVs, GT, CIM, cellular manufacturing, AS/RS and JIT production systems admit modelling via waiting line or queueing theory. In this paper, the literature available on the application of waiting line models in manufacturing is reviewed. Future research directions on waiting line model applications for improving the performance of the manufacturing are pointed out.

Integrating production and quality control policies: A survey

Abstract The literature available on integrating the various aspects of production lot-sizing, inspection, and rework under suitable classification scheme is reviewed in this paper. It is important that functional aspects of production activities are well integrated for producing low cost and defect free items. A strategic framework is presented for developing an efficient production-design system for modern manufacturing. In addition, future research directions on integrating various production functions are indicated for improving the performance of the system.

Total quality management: a new perspective for improving quality and productivity

This paper deals with total quality management (TQM) with an emphasis on developing suitable strategies for improving quality and productivity in manufacturing systems. In recent years, TQM has been seen as an important strategy for achieving success in business both in terms of quality and productivity. However, there seem to be no clear strategic framework and guide‐lines for implementing TQM in manufacturing in the light of available advanced production concepts and technologies. A review of previous implementation approaches of TQM in practice has been presented in order to gain further insights into the implementation aspects of TQM. The main objective of this paper is to present a general framework for the development of TQM in manufacturing organizations considering the recent developments in production concepts and technologies and competitiveness among firms to utilize quality as a competitive weapon.

Finnish earnings response coefficients: the information content of losses

This paper provides new evidence on the information content of losses in the relation between stock returns and annual accounting earnings. Consistent with earlier US evidence, accounting losses are not significantly related to stock returns in Finland. Moreover, it is shown that the different methods used to measure earnings in Finland affect the frequency of losses, substantially altering the estimated return-earnings relation. The results suggest that earnings adjusted in accordance with the recommendations of the Finnish Committee for Corporate Analysis are not more useful than the unadjusted reported earnings in explaining stock returns in Finland.

Delayed Price Response to the Announcements of Earnings and its Components in Finland

Several studies report that even after accounting earnings are announced, estimated cumulative unexpected returns continue to drift up for firms that report unexpectedly good earnings and down for firms that report unexpectedly bad earnings. This paper shows that because Finnish companies tend to pay more attention to tax considerations than so-called economic reality when preparing their financial reports, this drift does not exist for reported earnings, i.e. net profit based on Finnish accounting regulations. It appears, however, that several other income levels assessed by financial statement analysis are important in this respect. The results imply that firms that make extensive adjustments for tax purposes have high unexpected returns. This is explained by the fact that those firms have enough income to extensively exploit the depreciation and other earnings management possibilities.

Liquidity and the turn-of-the-month effect: evidence from Finland

Abstract This paper uses Finnish data to investigate the impact of liquidity on the turn-of-the-month (TOM) effect in stock returns. The empirical findings support the hypothesis that higher returns at the TOM than during the rest of the month is associated with increased liquidity, as measured by different measures of trading activity. Moreover, consistent with the hypothesis of increased buying pressure at the TOM, the number of bid quotes increases at the month-end. In addition, there is more in-house trading (internalization) at the TOM. This finding is consistent with the hypothesis that liquidity increases internalized trading, indicating that the TOM effect manifests itself with respect to the trading venue.

On the causality and co-movements of scandinavian stock market returns

This paper reports some tests of Scandinavian stock market indices. Firstly, Granger causality tests of daily Swedish, Norwegian, Danish and Finnish stock returns are performed. Secondly, the effects of world-wide returns on these four Scandinavian markets are analysed. Some causality between Scandinavian markets is observed. The Swedish market is found to be the leading one of the four, while the other three appear to have no significant influence on other markets. Thus, the results do not indicate full integration of information between Scandinavian stock markets. The world-wide returns seem to have significant leading effects on Scandinavian market returns. This may be due to the growing international capital movements across countries and stock exchanges. The ongoing internationalization may well have significant effects on the returns behaviour of Scandinavian stock markets, in particular in Norway, Denmark and Finland.