Valuation of reduced eutrophication in the Gulf of Finland : Choice experiment with attention to heterogeneous and discontinuous preferences and respondent uncertainty

Eutrophication of the Baltic Sea is a serious problem. This thesis estimates the benefit to Finns from reduced eutrophication in the Gulf of Finland, the most eutrophied part of the Baltic Sea, by applying the choice experiment method, which belongs to the family of stated preference methods. Because stated preference methods have been subject to criticism, e.g., due to their hypothetical survey context, this thesis contributes to the discussion by studying two anomalies that may lead to biased welfare estimates: respondent uncertainty and preference discontinuity. The former refers to the difficulty of stating one s preferences for an environmental good in a hypothetical context. The latter implies a departure from the continuity assumption of conventional consumer theory, which forms the basis for the method and the analysis. In the three essays of the thesis, discrete choice data are analyzed with the multinomial logit and mixed logit models. On average, Finns are willing to contribute to the water quality improvement. The probability for willingness increases with residential or recreational contact with the gulf, higher than average income, younger than average age, and the absence of dependent children in the household. On average, for Finns the relatively most important characteristic of water quality is water clarity followed by the desire for fewer occurrences of blue-green algae. For future nutrient reduction scenarios, the annual mean household willingness to pay estimates range from 271 to 448 and the aggregate welfare estimates for Finns range from 28 billion to 54 billion euros, depending on the model and the intensity of the reduction. Out of the respondents (N=726), 72.1% state in a follow-up question that they are either Certain or Quite certain about their answer when choosing the preferred alternative in the experiment. Based on the analysis of other follow-up questions and another sample (N=307), 10.4% of the respondents are identified as potentially having discontinuous preferences. In relation to both anomalies, the respondent- and questionnaire-specific variables are found among the underlying causes and a departure from standard analysis may improve the model fit and the efficiency of estimates, depending on the chosen modeling approach. The introduction of uncertainty about the future state of the Gulf increases the acceptance of the valuation scenario which may indicate an increased credibility of a proposed scenario. In conclusion, modeling preference heterogeneity is an essential part of the analysis of discrete choice data. The results regarding uncertainty in stating one s preferences and non-standard choice behavior are promising: accounting for these anomalies in the analysis may improve the precision of the estimates of benefit from reduced eutrophication in the Gulf of Finland.

The non-literary Latin letters. A study of their syntax and pragmatics

This dissertation studies the language of Latin letters that were written in Egypt and Vindolanda (in northern Britain) during the period 1st century BC 3rd century AD on papyri, ostraca, and wooden tablets. The majority of the texts is, in one way or another, connected with the Roman army. The focus of the study is on syntax and pragmatics. Besides traditional philological methods, modern syntactic theory is used as well, especially in the pragmatic analysis. The study begins with a critical survey of certain concepts that are current in the research on the Latin language, most importantly the concept of vulgar Latin , which, it is argued, seems to be used as an abstract noun for variation and change in Latin . Further, it is necessary to treat even the non-literary material primarily as written texts and not as straightforward reflections of spoken language. An examination of letter phraseology shows that there is considerable variation between the two major geographical areas of provenance. Latin letter writing in Egypt was influenced by Greek. The study highlights the importance of seeing the letters as a text type, with recurring phraseological elements appearing in the body text as well. It is argued that recognising these elements is essential for the correct analysis of the syntax. Three areas of syntax are discussed in detail: sentence connection (mainly parataxis), syntactically incoherent structures and word order (the order of the object and the verb). For certain types of sentence connection we may plausibly posit an origin in spoken Latin, but for many other linguistic phenomena attested in this material the issue of spoken Latin is anything but simple. Concerning the study of historical syntax, the letters offer information about the changing status of the accusative case. Incoherent structures may reflect contaminations in spoken language but usually the reason for them is the inability of the writer to put his thoughts into writing, especially when there is something more complicated to be expressed. Many incoherent expressions reflect the need to start the predication with a thematic constituent. Latin word order is seen as resulting from an interaction of syntactic and pragmatic factors. The preference for an order where the topic is placed sentence-initially can be seen in word order more generally as well. Furthermore, there appears a difference between Egypt and Vindolanda. The letters from Vindolanda show the order O(bject) V(erb) clearly more often than the letters from Egypt. Interestingly, this difference correlates with another, namely the use of the anaphoric pronoun is. This is an interesting observation in view of the fact that both of these are traditional Latin features, as opposed to those that foreshadow the Romance development (VO order and use of the anaphoric ille). However, it is difficult to say whether this is an indication of social or regional variation.

Effects of the digital subtitling software on the subtitling process : A survey among Finnish professional television subtitlers

Tutkielma käsittelee suomalaisten televisiotekstittäjien ammatillisuutta, käännösprosessia ja digitaalisten tekstitysohjelmien vaikutuksia tekstitysprosessiin ammattitekstittäjien näkökulmasta. Suomen television digitalisoituminen on aiheuttanut mullistuksia myös tekstitysalalla kun tekstitettävä kuvamateriaali on ryhdytty toimittamaan käännöstoimistoille ja tekstittäjille digitaalisena. Teoriaosuudessa käsitellään käännös- ja tekstitystutkimusta sekä koulutusta Suomessa, ammattitaitoa ja ammatillisuutta sekä kääntämisen apukeinoja. Tekstittäminen esitellään erikoistuneena kääntämisen muotona. On kuitenkin myös huomioitava, että kääntäminen on yksi vaihe tekstitysprosessissa. Teoriaosuus päättyy suomalaisten televisiotekstittäjien arjen ja työkentän nykytilanteen käsittelyyn – tekstittäjät työskentelevät monenlaisilla työehdoilla ja laadun kriteerit saatetaan joutua arvioimaan uudelleen. Empiirisen osan alussa esitetään, että suomalaisia televisiotekstittäjiä on haastateltu yllättävän vähän, ja Jääskeläisen ajatuksiin nojaten mainitaan, että tekstittämisen alalla on vielä paljon tutkimatta – etenkin suomalaisesta tekstitysprosessista löytyy tutkittavaa. Tutkimuskohde on ammatikseen televisioon tekstityksiä tekevät kääntäjät. Suomalaiselle tekstitykseen erikoistuneelle käännöstoimistolle työskenteleville tekstittäjille lähetettiin alkutalvesta 2008 kyselylomake, jolla kartoitettiin sekä monivalintakysymyksillä että avoimilla kysymyksillä heidän ammatillisuuttaan, työmenetelmiään, käännös- ja tekstitysprosessiaan, ammattiylpeyttään ja -identiteettiään, ajanhallintaansa, sekä heidän käyttämäänsä digitaalista tekstitysohjelmaa. Tutkimuksessa kävi ilmi, että lähes kolmanneksella vastaajista on ammatistaan neutraali tai jopa negatiivinen käsitys. Näitä tekstittäjiä yhdistää se seikka, että kaikilla on alle 5 vuotta kokemusta alalta. Valtaosa vastanneista on kuitenkin ylpeitä siitä, että toimivat suomen kielen ammattilaisina. Tekstitysprosessi oli lomakkeessa jaettu esikatseluvaiheeseen, käännösvaiheeseen, ajastamisvaiheeseen ja korjauskatseluvaiheeseen. Tekstittäjät pyydettiin mm. arvioimaan tekstitysprosessinsa kokonaiskestoa. Kestoissa ilmeni suuria eroavaisuuksia, joista ainakin osa korreloi kokemuksen kanssa. Runsas puolet vastaajista on hankkinut digitaalisen tekstitysohjelmiston käyttöönsä ja osa ajastaa edelleen käännöstoimistossa muun muassa ohjelmiston kalleuden vuoksi. Digitaalisen ohjelmiston myötä tekstitysprosessiin ja työkäytänteisiin on tullut muutoksia, kun videonauhureista ja televisioista on siirrytty pelkän tietokoneen käyttöön. On mahdollista tehdä etätyötä kaukomailta käsin, kääntää ja ajastaa lomittain tai tehdä esiajastus ja kääntää sitten. Digitaalinen tekniikka on siis mahdollistanut tekstitysprosessin muuttumisen ja vaihtoehtoiset työmenetelmät, mutta kaikista menetelmistä ei välttämättä ole tekstittäjälle hyötyä. Perinteinen tekstitysprosessi (esikatselu, repliikkijakojen merkitseminen käsikirjoitukseen, kääntäminen ja repliikkien laadinta, korjaukset ja tarkastuskatselu) vaikuttaa edelleen tehokkaimmalta. Vaikka työkäytänteet eroavat toisistaan, kokonaiskäsitys on se, että digitalisoitumisen alkukangertelujen jälkeen tekstittäjien työskentely on tehostunut.

To Petra via Jabal Haroun : Nabataean-Roman road remains in the Finnish Jabal Haroun Project survey area

Työ käsittelee Finnish Jabal Haroun Project -tutkimusryhmän Etelä-Jordaniasta inventoimalla keräämää arkeologista aineistoa (vuosilta 1999-2005) tietutkimuksen kannalta. Työn tarkoituksena on selvittää, miksi tutkimusalueella, Aaronin vuoren ympäristössä, sijaitsee tien jäänteitä ja miten tie on maastossa muinoin kulkenut. Lisäksi työ analysoi tien varsilla havaittujen rakennusten jäännösten suhdetta tiehen ja pyrkii ajoittamaan tien käyttöajankohdan (ajankohdat). Työn alkuoletuksena on, että pääosa tienvarsirakennuksista on liitettävissä tiehen ja tien sijoittuminen tutkimusalueelle johtuu pitkälti lähistöllä sijaitsevan Petran noususta merkittäväksi, Nabatealaisten harjoittaman kaupan keskukseksi, Lähi-idässä ajanlaskun alkuun mennessä. Tien jäänteitä tarkastellaan maisema-arkeologisin perustein. Tämä tarkoittaa sitä, että analyysissä korostuvat sekä kulttuuriset että ympäristölliset vaikuttimet. Niiden välistä, aikaan sidottua, suhdetta arvioidaan menneen ihmistoiminnan selittämiseksi. Tutkimusmenetelmät ovat paikkatietojärjestelmien soveltaminen, kohdekohtainen arkeologisen aineiston ja sijainnin tutkiminen, vertailevan aineiston käyttö sekä kolmiulotteinen tarkastelu. Tie ajoitetaan tienvarsikohteiden keramiikkalöytöjen avulla sekä rakenneanalyysin perusteella. Tutkimus osoittaa tien syntyneen alueen sijainnin takia. Sijainti oli edullinen suhteessa luonnonvaroihin, asutuskeskuksiin ja luontaisiin kulkuväyliin. Tien rakentajat osasivat taidokkaasti hyödyntää alueen luonnonpiirteitä ja käyttivät erityisiä menetelmiä vaikeiden tieosuuksien turvaamiseksi luonnonvoimien tuhoilta. Suurin osa tienvarsirakenteista voidaan katsoa johtuvan suoraan tien olemassaolosta, pieni osa rakenteista palveli pääsääntöisesti muita maankäytön muotoja. Petran vaikutus tien olemassaoloon ja muotoon oli suuri, kaupungin kehitys ja kukoistus näkyvät tiehen liitettävässä arkeologisessa aineistossa. Tien aktiivinen käyttö näyttää jatkuneen myös Roomalaisaikaan ensimmäisille vuosisadoille jKr., jonka jälkeen se hitaasti hiipui.

Temporomandibular disorders and related psychosocial factors in non-patients : A survey and a clinical follow-up study based on the RDC/TMD

Temporomandibular disorders (TMD) and psychosocial factors reportedly associate. The underlying factors remain partially obscure, however, and further studies are required to clarify the relationships. The aims of this study were thus to assess in a non-patient working population the prevalence of TMD and related symptoms, and to clinically diagnose and follow the natural courses of TMD over a one-year period. In addition, possible comorbidity of temporomandibular and/or neck muscle pain and perceived stress and their impact on work performance were investigated, as well as how various psychosocial aspects relate to TMD. A questionnaire was mailed to all 30- to 55-year-old employees of the Finnish Broadcasting Company Ltd. whose employment in the Helsinki area had lasted at least five years (n = 1784). Of the 1339 subjects, who returned the questionnaire, 241 were examined according to the RDC/TMD and standard neck muscle palpation methods. Clinical signs of temporomandibular and/or neck muscle pain were found in 118 subjects. One-year follow-up TMD examinations were conducted on 211 subjects. The prevalence of frequent painless TMJ-related symptoms was 10%, orofacial pain 7%, neck pain 38%, and headache 15%. TMD diagnoses were: myofascial pain (13%), disc displacements (16%), and arthralgia, osteoarthritis, osteoarthrosis (4%). Chronic myofascial pain was present in 7% and chronic disc displacement with reduction in 11% of the subjects. Symptoms were significantly associated with almost all the studied psychosocial symptoms. Reduced work performance was significantly positively associated with continuous pain, severity of pain, and health stress perception, and according to logistic regression, somatization with the probability of having chronic myofascial pain. It could be concluded based on the results of this study among a non-patient working population that TMD and related symptoms are common and associated with psychosocial factors. Moreover, myofascial pain and disc displacement with reduction are the most common diagnoses of TMD. In addition, self-reported health related stress, and continuous pain in temporomandibular and/or neck muscles are associated with reduced work performance, and somatization is significantly associated with chronic myofascial pain.

Konsumerismi, potilaiden ja kuluttajien aktiivinen toiminta sekä erityisesti lääkäreiden kokemukset ja näkemykset potilaista kuluttajina

Consumerism emphasises the patient s position and freedom of choice. Consumerism is being promoted by a range of phenomena occurring in society and health care. Different actors hold different views on the patient as a consumer and on his or her participation. Consumer demand is created outside the patient physician relationship and the commercialisation of services generates new expectations with respect to physician s work. More and more patients may be interested in adopting a more equal position in the care relationship, and trying to negotiate with the physician or to even dictate how he or she should be cared for. In Finland, very little research has been conducted on patients and consumers organising themselves at national system level, patients as choosers, and physicians attitudes to various consumerist phenomena or the choice made by the patient. In the empirical data for this study, the term consumer-patient refers to active consumers and patients making choices related to their clinical care prior to a physician s diagnosis. Consumer-patients are also represented by consumer and patient organisations and movements. The main research question is: How do physicians regard the care choice made by the patient? This question is addressed from a perspective encompassing patients and consumers organised activities and individuals active behaviour in health care as well as physicians experiences and their views on patients as consumers making choices related to their care. The first part (Study I), examines the patient organisation field, information sources used including the websites of such organisations, files from Finland s Slot Machine Association, RAY, a survey conducted by a Finnish television news department and interviews of patient organisations. Based on observation and a physician survey, Study II examines physicians attitudes to the idea that patients could obtain information through consumer movements about physicians care practices before seeking medical care. Studies III−IV use a physician survey to examine physicians attitudes to direct-to-consumer-advertising of prescription drugs (DTCA) and their experiences and views of patient requests related to treatments and examinations. Study V uses comparative surveys to examine the attitudes of health care professionals and the population to the introduction of new technologies in health care, using genetic screenings and tests as an example. The number of patient organisations increased, with a particular escalation as of the 1990s. The characteristics and operating methods of the organisations varied greatly. Physicians organisations adopted a negative or neutral attitude towards the consumer movements idea of distributing information on care practices, whereas individual physicians attitudes were slightly more positive. Physicians regarded direct-to-consumer-advertising of prescription drugs as negative, but took a more permissive attitude towards indirect advertising. More than every third physician considered drug advertisements in general to be harmful or useless in the distribution of drug information to patients or consumers. More than half of physicians conducting patient work reported that they (very) often encountered patients who stated upon arrival for a consultation that they wanted specific treatments or examinations, and that the number of such situations had increased. Such situations were viewed as positive with regard to the care relationship by every fifth physician and as negative by two fifths. Physicians justified a reserved attitude to the patients consumer role by referring to their medical expertise and position as care decision-makers, the patient physician relationship and the public health care system. Reasons for a positive attitude included the patient s participation and co-operation, the patient physician relationship and the patient s knowledge. Professionals were more reserved than lay people about the introduction and extension of genetic technologies in health care. A significant minority of the physicians did not take a clear pro or con attitude to the patients consumer role or to the use of new technologies in health care. The physicians age, gender, place of work and specialisation influenced their attitudes to the patient s consumer role, and private physicians viewed it in a more positive light than those working in public health care. Active consumer-patients challenge the society to hold a discussion of the patient s choice, participation in care decision-making and participation in health care policy in general. Their transformation into customers and consumers implies not only a new division of individuals roles and powers, but also contributes to changing relationships between system level roles: between citizens and the state and between public and private health care. This phenomenon raises various issues related to health care policy. In conclusion, topics are presented for discussion, practical measures and further research. Keywords: health care, consumerism, distribution of technologies, commercialisation, physicians, patients, consumers, patient s choice, patient s role.

Determinants of farmer retirement and farm succession in Finland

In the past decade, the Finnish agricultural sector has undergone rapid structural changes. The number of farms has decreased and the average farm size has increased when the number of farms transferred to new entrants has decreased. Part of the structural change in agriculture is manifested in early retirement programmes. In studying farmers exit behaviour in different countries, institutional differences, incentive programmes and constraints are found to matter. In Finland, farmers early retirement programmes were first introduced in 1974 and, during the last ten years, they have been carried out within the European Union framework for these programmes. The early retirement benefits are farmer specific and de-pend on the level of pension insurance the farmer has paid over his active farming years. In order to predict the future development of the agricultural sector, farmers have been frequently asked about their future plans and their plans for succession. However, the plans the farmers made for succession have been found to be time inconsistent. This study estimates the value of farmers stated succession plans in predicting revealed succession decisions. A stated succession plan exists when a farmer answers in a survey questionnaire that the farm is going to be transferred to a new entrant within a five-year period. The succession is revealed when the farm is transferred to a suc-cessor. Stated and revealed behaviour was estimated as a recursive Binomial Probit Model, which accounts for the censoring of the decision variables and controls for a potential correlation between the two equations. The results suggest that the succession plans, as stated by elderly farmers in the questionnaires, do not provide information that is significant and valuable in predicting true, com-pleted successions. Therefore, farmer exit should be analysed based on observed behaviour rather than on stated plans and intentions. As farm retirement plays a crucial role in determining the characteristics of structural change in agriculture, it is important to establish the factors which determine an exit from farming among eld-erly farmers and how off-farm income and income losses affect their exit choices. In this study, the observed choice of pension scheme by elderly farmers was analysed by a bivariate probit model. Despite some variations in significance and the effects of each factor, the ages of the farmer and spouse, the age and number of potential successors, farm size, income loss when retiring and the location of the farm together with the production line were found to be the most important determi-nants of early retirement and the transfer or closure of farms. Recently, the labour status of the spouse has been found to contribute significantly to individual retirement decisions. In this study, the effect of spousal retirement and economic incentives related to the timing of a farming couple s early retirement decision were analysed with a duration model. The results suggest that an expected pension in particular advances farm transfers. It was found that on farms operated by a couple, both early retirement and farm succession took place more often than on farms operated by a single person. However, the existence of a spouse delayed the timing of early retirement. Farming couples were found to co-ordinate their early retirement decisions when they both exit through agricultural retirement programmes, but such a co-ordination did not exist when one of the spouses retired under other pension schemes. Besides changes in the agricultural structure, the share and amount of off-farm income of a farm family s total income has also increased. In the study, the effect of off-farm income on farmers retirement decisions, in addition to other financial factors, was analysed. The unknown parameters were first estimated by a switching-type multivariate probit model and then by the simulated maxi-mum likelihood (SML) method, controlling for farmer specific fixed effects and serial correlation of the errors. The results suggest that elderly farmers off-farm income is a significant determinant in a farmer s choice to exit and close down the farm. However, off-farm income only has a short term effect on structural changes in agriculture since it does not significantly contribute to the timing of farm successions.

Health-Related Quality of Life and Mental Disorders in Finland

Quality of life (QoL) and Health-related quality of life (HRQoL) are becoming one of the key outcomes of health care due to increased respect for the subjective valuations and well-being of patients and an increasing part of the ageing population living with chronic, non-fatal conditions. Preference-based HRQoL measures enable estimation of health utility, which can be useful for rational rationing, evidence-based medicine and health policy. This study aimed to compare the individual severity and public health burden of major chronic conditions in Finland, including and focusing on reliably diagnosed psychiatric conditions. The study is based on the Health 2000 survey, a representative general population survey of 8028 Finns aged 30 and over. Depressive, anxiety and alcohol use disorders were diagnosed with the Composite International Diagnostic Interview (M-CIDI). HRQoL was measured with the 15D and the EQ-5D, with 83% response rate. This study found that people with psychiatric disorders had the lowest 15D HRQoL scores at all ages, in comparison to other main groups of chronic conditions. Considering 29 individual conditions, three of the four most severe (on 15D) were psychiatric disorders; the most severe was Parkinson s disease. Of the psychiatric disorders, chronic conditions that have sometimes been considered relatively mild - dysthymia, agoraphobia, generalized anxiety disorder and social phobia - were found to be the most severe. This was explained both by the severity of the impact of these disorders on mental health domains of HRQoL, and also by the fact that decreases were widespread on most dimensions of HRQoL. Considering the public health burden of conditions, musculoskeletal disorders were associated with the largest burden, followed by psychiatric disorders. Psychiatric disorders were associated with the largest burden at younger ages. Of individual conditions, the largest burden found was for depressive disorders, followed by urinary incontinence and arthrosis of the hip and knee. The public health burden increased greatly with age, so the ageing of the Finnish population will mean that the disease burden caused by chronic conditions will increase by a quarter up to year 2040, if morbidity patterns do not change. Investigating alcohol consumption and HRQoL revealed that although abstainers had poorer HRQoL than moderate drinkers, this was mainly due to many abstainers being former drinkers and having the poorest HRQoL. Moderate drinkers did not have significantly better HRQoL than abstainers who were not former drinkers. Psychiatric disorders are associated with a large part of the non-fatal disease burden in Finland. In particular anxiety disorders appear to be more severe and have a larger public health burden than previously thought.

How do Researchers Find and Retrieve Scientific Publications – A Case study of the Impact of the Internet on the Construction IT and Construction Management Research Communities

The World Wide Web provides the opportunity for a radically changed and much more efficient communication process for scientific results. A survey in the closely related domains of construction information technology and construction management was conducted in February 2000, aimed at measuring to what extent these opportunities are already changing the scientific information exchange and how researchers feel about the changes. The paper presents the results based on 236 replies to an extensive Web based questionnaire. 65% of the respondents stated their primary research interest as IT in A/E/C and 20% as construction management and economics. The questions dealt with how researchers find, access and read different sources; how much and what publications they read; how often and to which conferences they travel; how much they publish, and what are the criteria for where they eventually decide to publish. Some of the questions confronted traditional and electronic publishing with one final section dedicated to opinions about electronic publishing. According to the survey researchers already download half of the material that they read digitally from the Web. The most popular method for retrieving an interesting publication is downloading it for free from the author’s or publisher’s website. Researchers are not particularly willing to pay for electronic scientific publications. There is much support for a scenario of electronic journals available totally freely on the Web, where the costs could be covered by for instance professional societies or the publishing university. The shift that the Web is causing seems to be towards the "just in time" reading of literature. Also, frequent users of the Web rely less on scientific publications and tend to read fewer articles. If available with little effort, papers published in traditional journals are preferred; if not, the papers should be on the Web. In these circumstances, the role of paper-based journals published by established publishers is shifting from the core "information exchange" to the building of authors' prestige. The respondents feel they should build up their reputations by publishing in journals and relevant conferences, but then make their work freely available on the Web.

Political Risk in Credit Evaluation: Empirical Studies and Survey Results

Financing trade between economic agents located in different countries is affected by many types of risks, resulting from incomplete information about the debtor, the problems of enforcing international contracts, or the prevalence of political and financial crises. Trade is important for economic development and the availability of trade finance is essential, especially for developing countries. Relatively few studies treat the topic of political risk, particularly in the context of international lending. This thesis explores new ground to identify links between political risk and international debt defaults. The core hypothesis of the study is that the default probability of debt increases with increasing political risk in the country of the borrower. The thesis consists of three essays that support the hypothesis from different angles of the credit evaluation process. The first essay takes the point of view of an international lender assessing the credit risk of a public borrower. The second investigates creditworthiness assessment of companies. The obtained results are substantiated in the third essay that deals with an extensive political risk survey among finance professionals in developing countries. The financial instruments of core interest are export credit guaranteed debt initiated between the Export Credit Agency of Finland and buyers in 145 countries between 1975 and 2006. Default events of the foreign credit counterparts are conditioned on country-specific macroeconomic variables, corporate-specific accounting information as well as political risk indicators from various international sources. Essay 1 examines debt issued to government controlled institutions and conditions public default events on traditional macroeconomic fundamentals, in addition to selected political and institutional risk factors. Confirming previous research, the study finds country indebtedness and the GDP growth rate to be significant indicators of public default. Further, it is shown that public defaults respond to various political risk factors. However, the impact of the risk varies between countries at different stages of economic development. Essay 2 proceeds by investigating political risk factors as conveivable drivers of corporate default and uses traditional accounting variables together with new political risk indicators in the credit evaluation of private debtors. The study finds links between corporate default and leverage, as well as between corporate default and the general investment climate and measeures of conflict in the debtor country. Essay 3 concludes the thesis by offering survey evidence on the impact of political risk on debt default, as perceived and experienced by 103 finance professionals in 38 developing countries. Taken together, the results of the thesis suggest that various forms of political risk are associated with international debt defaults and continue to pose great concerns for both international creditors and borrowers in developing countries. The study provides new insights on the importance of variable selection in country risk analysis, and shows how political risk is actually perceived and experienced in the riskier, often lower income countries of the global economy.

Perinatal mortality and maternal health in rural China

Background and context Since the economic reforms of 1978, China has been acclaimed as a remarkable economy, achieving 9% annual growth per head for more than 25 years. However, China's health sector has not fared well. The population health gains slowed down and health disparities increased. In the field of health and health care, significant progress in maternal care has been achieved. However, there still remain important disparities between the urban and rural areas and among the rural areas in terms of economic development. The excess female infant deaths and the rapidly increasing sex ratio at birth in the last decade aroused serious concerns among policy makers and scholars. Decentralization of the government administration and health sector reform impacts maternal care. Many studies using census data have been conducted to explore the determinants of a high sex ratio at birth, but no agreement has been so far reached on the possible contributing factors. No study using family planning system data has been conducted to explore perinatal mortality and sex ratio at birth and only few studies have examined the impact of the decentralization of government and health sector reforms on the provision and organization of maternal care in rural China. Objectives The general objective of this study was to investigate the state of perinatal health and maternal care and their determinants in rural China under the historic context of major socioeconomic reforms and the one child family planning policy. The specific objectives of the study included: 1) to study pregnancy outcomes and perinatal health and their correlates in a rural Chinese county; 2) to examine the issue of sex ratio at birth and its determinants in a rural Chinese county; 3) to explore the patterns of provision, utilization, and content of maternal care in a rural Chinese county; 4) to investigate the changes in the use of maternal care in China from 1991 to 2003. Materials and Methods This study is based on a project for evaluating the prenatal care programme in Dingyuan county in 1999-2003, Anhui province, China and a nationwide household health survey to describe the changes in maternal care utilization. The approaches used included a retrospective cohort study, cross sectional interview surveys, informant interviews, observations and the use of statistical data. The data sources included the following: 1) A cohort of pregnant women followed from pregnancy up to 7 days after birth in 20 townships in the study county, collecting information on pregnancy outcomes using family planning records; 2) A questionnaire interview survey given to women who gave birth between 2001 and 2003; 3) Various statistical and informant surveys data collected from the study county; 4) Three national household health interview survey data sets (1993-2003) were utilized, and reanalyzed to described the changes in maternity care utilization. Relative risks (RR) and their confidence intervals (CI) were calculated for comparison between parity, approval status, infant sex and township groups. The chi-square test was used to analyse the disparity of use of maternal care between and within urban and rural areas and its trend across the years in China. Logistic regression was used to analyse the factors associated with hospital delivery in rural areas. Results There were 3697 pregnancies in the study cohort, resulting in 3092 live births in a total population of 299463 in the 20 study townships during 1999-2000. The average age at pregnancy in the cohort was 25.9 years. Of the women, 61% were childless, 38% already had one child and 0.3% had two children before the current pregnancy. About 90% of approved pregnancies ended in a live birth while 73% of the unapproved ones were aborted. The perinatal mortality rate was 69 per thousand births. If the 30 induced abortions in which the gestational age was more than 28 weeks had been counted as perinatal deaths, the perinatal mortality rate would have been as high as 78 per thousand. The perinatal mortality rate was negatively associated with the wealth of the township. Approximately two thirds of the perinatal deaths occurred in the early neonatal period. Both the still birth rate and the early neonatal death rate increased with parity. The risk of a stillbirth in a second pregnancy was almost four times that for a first pregnancy, while the risk of early neonatal deaths doubled. The early neonatal mortality rate was twice as high for female as for male infants. The sex difference in the early neonatal mortality rate was mainly attributable to mortality in second births. The male early neonatal mortality rate was not affected by parity, while the female early neonatal mortality rate increased dramatically with parity: it was about six times higher for second births than for first births. About 82% early neonatal deaths happened within 24 hours after birth, and during that time, girls were almost three times more likely to die than boys. The death rate of females on the day of birth increased much more sharply with parity than that of males. The total sex ratio at birth of 3697 registered pregnancies was 152 males to 100 females, with 118 and 287 in first and second pregnancies, respectively. Among unapproved pregnancies, there were almost 5 live-born boys for each girl. Most prenatal and delivery care was to be taken care of in township hospitals. At the village level, there were small private clinics. There was no limitation period for the provision of prenatal and postnatal care by private practitioners. They were not permitted to provide delivery care by the county health bureau, but as some 12% of all births occurred either at home or at private clinics; some village health workers might have been involved. The county level hospitals served as the referral centers for the township hospitals in the county. However, there was no formal regulation or guideline on how the referral system should work. Whether or not a woman was referred to a higher level hospital depended on the individual midwife's professional judgment and on the clients' compliance. The county health bureau had little power over township hospitals, because township hospitals had in the decentralization process become directly accountable to the township government. In the township and county hospitals only 10-20% of the recurrent costs were funded by local government (the township hospital was funded by the township government and the county hospital was funded by the county government) and the hospitals collected user fees to balance their budgets. Also the staff salaries depended on fee incomes by the hospital. The hospitals could define the user charges themselves. Prenatal care consultations were however free in most township hospitals. None of the midwives made postnatal home visits, because of low profit of these services. The three national household health survey data showed that the proportion of women receiving their first prenatal visit within 12 weeks increased greatly from the early to middle 1990s in all areas except for large cities. The increase was much larger in the rural areas, reducing the urban-rural difference from more than 4 times to about 1.4 times. The proportion of women that received antenatal care visits meeting the Ministry of Health s standard (at least 5 times) in the rural areas increased sharply from 12% in 1991-1993 to 36% in 2001-2003. In rural areas, the proportion increase was much faster in less developed areas than in developed areas. The hospital delivery rate increased slightly from 90% to 94% in urban areas while the proportion increased from 27% to 69% in rural areas. The fastest change was found to be in type 4 rural areas, where the utilization even quadrupled. The overall difference between rural and urban areas was substantially narrowed over the period. Multiple logistic regression analysis shows that time periods, residency in rural or urban areas, income levels, age group, education levels, delivery history, occupation, health insurance and distance from the nearest health care facilities were significantly associated with hospital delivery rates. Conclusions 1. Perinatal mortality in this study was much higher than that for urban areas as well as any reported rate from specific studies in rural areas of China. Previous studies in which calculations of infant mortality were not based on epidemiological surveys have been shown to underestimate the rates by more than 50%. 2. Routine statistics collected by the Chinese family planning system proved to be a reliable data source for studying perinatal health, including still births, neonatal deaths, sex ratio at birth and among newborns. National Household Health Survey data proved to be a useful and reliable data source for studying population health and health services. Prior to this research there were few studies in these areas available to international audiences. 3.Though perinatal mortality rate was negatively associated with the level of township economic development, the excess female early neonatal mortality rate contributed much more to high perinatal mortality rate than economic factors. This was likely a result of the role of the family planning policy and the traditional preferences for sons, which leads to lethal neglect of female newborns and high perinatal mortality. 4. The selective abortions of female foetuses were likely to contribute most to the high sex ratio at birth. The underreporting of female births seemed to have played a secondary role. The higher early neonatal mortality rate in second-born as compared to first-born children, particularly in females, may indicate that neglect or poorer care of female newborn infants also contributes to the high sex ratio at birth or among newborns. Existing family planning policy proved not to effectively control the steadily increased birth sex ratio. 5. The rural-urban gap in service utilization was on average significantly narrowed in terms of maternal healthcare in China from 1991 to 2003. This demonstrates that significant achievements in reducing inequities can be made through a combination of socio-economic development and targeted investments in improving health services, including infrastructure, staff capacities, and subsidies to reduce the costs of service utilization for the poorest. However, the huge gap which persisted among cities of different size and within different types of rural areas indicated the need for further efforts to support the poorest areas. 6. Hospital delivery care in the study county was better accepted by women because most of women think delivery care was very important while prenatal and postnatal care were not. Hospital delivery care was more systematically provided and promoted than prenatal and postnatal care by township hospital in the study area. The reliance of hospital staff income on user fees gave the hospitals an incentive to put more emphasis on revenue generating activities such as delivery care instead of prenatal and postnatal care, since delivery care generated much profits than prenatal and postnatal care . Recommendations 1. It is essential for the central government to re-assess and modify existing family planning policies. In order to keep national sex balance, the existing practice of one couple one child in urban areas and at-least-one-son a couple in rural areas should be gradually changed to a two-children-a-couple policy throughout the country. The government should establish a favourable social security policy for couples, especially for rural couples who have only daughters, with particular emphasis on their pension and medical care insurance, combined with an educational campaign for equal rights for boys and girls in society. 2. There is currently no routine vital-statistics registration system in rural China. Using the findings of this study, the central government could set up a routine vital-statistics registration system using family planning routine work records, which could be used by policy makers and researchers. 3. It is possible for the central and provincial government to invest more in the less developed and poor rural areas to increase the access of pregnant women in these areas to maternal care services. Central government together with local government should gradually provide free maternal care including prenatal and postnatal as well as delivery care to the women in poor and less developed rural areas. 4. Future research could be done to explore if county and the township level health care sector and the family planning system could be merged to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of maternal and child care. 5. Future research could be done to explore the relative contribution of maternal care, economic development and family planning policy on perinatal and child health using prospective cohort studies and community based randomized trials. Key words: perinatal health, perinatal mortality, stillbirth, neonatal death, sex selective abortion, sex ratio at birth, family planning, son preference, maternal care, prenatal care, postnatal care, equity, China

Do Households Have Rational Expectations on Future Consumption? Evidence from the Finnish Consumer Survey

Ever since its initial introduction some fifty years ago, the rational expectations paradigm has dominated the way economic theory handles uncertainty. The main assertion made by John F. Muth (1961), seen by many as the father of the paradigm, is that expectations of rational economic agents should essentially be equal to the predictions of relevant economic theory, since rational agents should use information available to them in an optimal way. This assumption often has important consequences on the results and interpretations of the models where it is applied. Although the rational expectations assumption can be applied to virtually any economic theory, the focus in this thesis is on macroeconomic theories of consumption, especially the Rational Expectations–Permanent Income Hypothesis proposed by Robert E. Hall in 1978. The much-debated theory suggests that, assuming that agents have rational expectations on their future income, consumption decisions should follow a random walk, and the best forecast of future consumption level is the current consumption level. Then, changes in consumption are unforecastable. This thesis constructs an empirical test for the Rational Expectations–Permanent Income Hypothesis using Finnish Consumer Survey data as well as various Finnish macroeconomic data. The data sample covers the years 1995–2010. Consumer survey data may be interpreted to directly represent household expectations, which makes it an interesting tool for this particular test. The variable to be predicted is the growth of total household consumption expenditure. The main empirical result is that the Consumer Confidence Index (CCI), a balance figure computed from the most important consumer survey responses, does have statistically significant predictive power over the change in total consumption expenditure. The history of consumption expenditure growth itself, however, fails to predict its own future values. This indicates that the CCI contains some information that the history of consumption decisions does not, and that the consumption decisions are not optimal in the theoretical context. However, when conditioned on various macroeconomic variables, the CCI loses its predictive ability. This finding suggests that the index is merely a (partial) summary of macroeconomic information, and does not contain any significant private information on consumption intentions of households not directly deductible from the objective economic variables. In conclusion, the Rational Expectations–Permanent Income Hypothesis is strongly rejected by the empirical results in this thesis. This result is in accordance with most earlier studies conducted on the topic.

The Quest for Well-being in Growth Industries 2: The Survey

This working paper reports the ongoing research conducted in the research project, The Quest for Well-being in Growth Industries: A Collaborative Study in Finland and Scotland, under the auspices of Academy of Finland research programme, The Future of Work and Well-being. The research project examines the contradictory pressures for policies and practices towards both the inhibition and the enhancement of work-related well-being that are likely in growth industries. The overall aim is to evaluate the development, implementation and use of work-related well-being policies in four selected growth industries. These – electronics, care, finance and accounting, and tourism – have been selected on the basis of EU and national forecasts, and demographic and socio-economic trends in standard and non-standard employment. In this paper we aim to review the survey that constitutes the second main phase of this research.

Rate Control State-of-the-art Survey

The majority of Internet traffic use Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) as the transport level protocol. It provides a reliable ordered byte stream for the applications. However, applications such as live video streaming place an emphasis on timeliness over reliability. Also a smooth sending rate can be desirable over sharp changes in the sending rate. For these applications TCP is not necessarily suitable. Rate control attempts to address the demands of these applications. An important design feature in all rate control mechanisms is TCP friendliness. We should not negatively impact TCP performance since it is still the dominant protocol. Rate Control mechanisms are classified into two different mechanisms: window-based mechanisms and rate-based mechanisms. Window-based mechanisms increase their sending rate after a successful transfer of a window of packets similar to TCP. They typically decrease their sending rate sharply after a packet loss. Rate-based solutions control their sending rate in some other way. A large subset of rate-based solutions are called equation-based solutions. Equation-based solutions have a control equation which provides an allowed sending rate. Typically these rate-based solutions react slower to both packet losses and increases in available bandwidth making their sending rate smoother than that of window-based solutions. This report contains a survey of rate control mechanisms and a discussion of their relative strengths and weaknesses. A section is dedicated to a discussion on the enhancements in wireless environments. Another topic in the report is bandwidth estimation. Bandwidth estimation is divided into capacity estimation and available bandwidth estimation. We describe techniques that enable the calculation of a fair sending rate that can be used to create novel rate control mechanisms.