Vol. 11, No. 2

Aarni Pursiainen:
Relationship between volatility and multilisting: evidence from the Finnish stock market (pp. 65–85)

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to provide an additional insight into the stock price volatility of all Finnish companies that are listed on foreign stock exchanges through studying permanent changes to the stock price volatility brought by trading on many markets. We find that the variances of both restricted and unrestricted stocks are slightly lower during the post-listing period.

(JEL: G14, G15)

Jan Klavus:
Progressivity of health care financing: estimation and statistical inference (pp. 86–95)

Abstract

This paper examines the vertical distribution of health care financing in Finland. The empirical analysis is based on a new approach that allows the estimation of inequality indices from micro-level data, and testing for the statistical significance of differences in the distributions. Estimates of standard errors were computed for the Gini coefficient of gross income and for concentration and progressivity indices of various health care financing sources. The results suggest that overall health care financing in Finland in the early 1990s was distributed progressively: poorer households financed health care by a smaller proportion of their gross income than richer households. However; the level of progressivity of various financing sources differed, and in most cases the differences were sufficiently large to rank the various financing components according to their contribution to overall progressivity.

(JEL: H22, I19)

Gunnar Forsling:
Utilization of tax allowances (pp. 96–109)

Abstract

This paper evaluates the impact of an intervention to improve farming techniques and food security in the Gaza area of rural Mozambique. We examine the impact of a group-based approach to technology adoption in subsistence agriculture, using panel data collected by our research team on over 200 households from treatment and control villages from 2008–10. The intervention was successful in encouraging vulnerable households to participate in farmers’ groups, and the impacts on farming techniques, such as fertilizer use, are significant in the first treatment year. The impact on food security is mixed across indicators but similar in both treatment years and cannot be attributed to whether or not households adopted new technologies.

(JEL: O1, O2)

Eugenia Kazamaki Ottersten:
Screening contracts when institutions matter: an example (pp. 110–116)

Abstract

Swedish tax-paying firms have systematically failed to take full advantage of the allowances granted by the government. The average utilization level varied between 62 and 86 percent in the years 1979-1993. The Swedish tax-cut cum basebroadening tax reform in 1991 meant that the amount eligible for appropriation to untaxed reserves was much reduced. Our results show that the proportion of firms that fully utilize the allowances has increased since the reform. One interpretation of this is that the importance of the tax system for the incentive to invest has increased, since the user cost of capital is unaffected by the corporate tax if firms have unutilized tax allowances. Contrary to what is commonly believed our results suggest that dividend payments are not the main reason for abstaining from tax allowances.

Finnish Economic Papers 2/1998