“We live in in a house of blo- in a block of flats.” – Self-repair in EFL Spoken Language

Tämä tutkielma on osa Helsingin yliopiston rahoittamaa HY-talk -tutkimusprojektia, jonka tavoite on vankentaa puheviestinnän, erityisesti vieraiden kielten suullisen taidon opetusta ja arviointia yleissivistävässä koulutuksessa ja korkeakouluasteella. Tämän tutkielman tavoite on selvittää millaisia korjauksia englantia vieraana kielenä puhuvat ihmiset tekevät puheeseensa ja tutkia itsekorjauksen ja sujuvuuden välistä suhdetta. Korjausjäsennystä ja itsekorjausta on aiemmin tutkittu sekä keskustelunanalyysin että psykolingvistiikan aloilla, ja vaikka tämä tutkielma onkin lähempänä aiempaa keskustelunanalyyttistä kuin psykolingvististä tutkimusta, siinä hyödynnetään molempia suuntauksia. Itsekorjausta on yleisesti pidetty merkkinä erityisesti ei-natiivien kielenpuhujien sujuvuuden puutteesta. Tämän tutkielman tarkoitus on selvittää, kuinka läheisesti itsekorjaus todella liittyy sujuvuuteen tai sen puutteeseen. Tutkielman materiaali koostuu HY-talk -projektia varten kerätyistä puhenäytteistä ja niiden pohjalta tehdyistä taitotasoarvioinneista. Puhenäytteet kerättiin vuonna 2007 projektia varten järjestettyjen puhekielen testaustilanteiden yhteydessä kolmessa eteläsuomalaisessa koulussa. Koska projektin tavoitteena on tutkia ja parantaa kielten suullisen taidon arviointia, projektissa mukana olleet kieliammattilaiset arvioivat puhujien taitotasot projektia varten (Eurooppalaisen Viitekehyksen taitotasokuvainten pohjalta) koottujen arviointiasteikoiden perusteella, ja nämä arvioinnit tallennettiin osaksi projektin materiaalia. Tutkielmassa analysoidaan itsekorjauksia aiemman psykolingvistisen tutkimuksen pohjalta kootun korjaustyyppiluokituksen sekä tätä tutkielmaa varten luodun korjausten oikeellisuutta vertailevan luokituksen avulla. Lisäksi siinä vertaillaan kahden korkeamman ja kahden matalamman taitotasoarvioinnin saaneen puhujan itsekorjauksia. Tulokset osoittavat, että ei-natiivien puheessa esiintyy monenlaisia eri korjaustyyppejä, ja että yleisimpiä korjauksia ovat alkuperäisen lausuman toistot. Yleisiä ovat myös korjaukset, joissa puhuja korjaa virheen tai keskeyttää puheensa ja aloittaa kokonaan uuden lausuman. Lisäksi tuloksista käy ilmi, ettei suurin osa korjauksista todennäköisesti johdu puhujien sujuvuuden puutteesta. Yleisimmät korjaustyypit voivat johtua suurimmaksi osaksi yksilön puhetyylistä, siitä, että puhuja hakee jotain tiettyä sanaa tai ilmausta mielessään tai siitä, että puhuja korjaa puheessaan huomaamansa kieliopillisen, sanastollisen tai äänteellisen virheen. Vertailu korkeammalle ja matalammalle taitotasolle arvioitujen puhujien välillä osoittaa selkeimmin, ettei suurin osa itsekorjauksista ole yhteydessä puhujan sujuvuuteen. Vertailusta käy ilmi, ettei pelkkä itsekorjausten määrä kerro kuinka sujuvasti puhuja käyttää kieltä, sillä toinen korkeammalle taitotasolle arvioiduista puhujista korjaa puhettaan lähes yhtä monesti kuin matalammalle tasolle arvioidut puhujat. Lisäksi korjausten oikeellisuutta vertailevan luokituksen tulokset viittaavat siihen, etteivät niin korkeammalle kuin matalammallekaan tasolle arvioidut puhujat useimmiten korjaa puhettaan siksi, etteivät pystyisi ilmaisemaan viestiään oikein ja ymmärrettävästi.

Sairaanhoitajaksi kasvattaminen : Sairaanhoitajakoulutus ja siinä käytetyt oppikirjat Suomessa vuoteen 1967 asti

The historical development of Finnish nursing textbooks from the late 1880s to 1967: the training of nurses in the Foucauldian perspective. This study aims, first, to analyse the historical development of Finnish nursing textbooks in the training of nurses and in nursing education: what Foucauldian power processes operate in the writing and publishing processes? What picture of nursing did early nursing books portray and who were the decision makers? Second, this study also aims to analyse the processes of power in nurse training processes. The time frame extends from the early stages of nurse training in the late 1880s to 1967. This present study is a part of textbook research and of the history of professional education in Finland. This study seeks to explain how, who or what contributed the power processes involved in the writing of nursing textbooks and through textbooks. Did someone use these books as a tool to influence nursing education? The third aim of this study is to define and analyse the purpose of nurse training. Michel Foucault´s concept of power served as an explanatory framework for this study. A very central part of power is the assembling of data, the supplying of information and messages, and the creation of discourses. When applied to the training of nurses, power dictates what information is taught in the training and contained in the books. Thus, the textbook holds an influential position as a power user in these processes. Other processes in which such power is exercised include school discipline and all other normalizing processes. One of most powerful ways of adapting is the hall of residence, where nursing pupils were required to live. Trained nurses desired to separate themselves from their untrained predecessors and from those with less training by wearing different uniforms and living in separate housing units. The state supported the registration of trained nurses by legislation. With this decision the state made it illegal to work as a nurse without an authorised education, and use these regulations to limit and confirm the professional knowledge and power of nurses. Nurses, physicians and government authorities used textbooks in nursing education as tools to achieve their own purposes and principles. With these books all three groups attempted to confirm their own professional power and knowledge while at the same time limit the power and expertise of others. Public authorities sought to unify the training of nurses and the basis of knowledge in all nursing schools in Finland with similar and obligatory textbooks. This standardisation started 20 years before the government unified nursing training in 1930. The textbooks also served as data assemblers in unifying nursing practices in Finnish hospitals, because the Medical Board required all training hospitals to attach the textbooks to units with nursing pupils. For the nurses, and especially for the associations of Finnish nurses, making and publishing their own textbooks for the training of nurses was a part of their professional projects. With these textbooks, the nursing elite and the teachers tended to prepare nursing pupils’ identities for nursing’s very special mission. From the 1960s, nursing was no longer understood as a mission, but as a normal vocation. Nurses and doctors disputed this view throughout the period studied, which was the optimal relationship between theory and practice in nursing textbooks and in nurse education. The discussion of medical knowledge in nursing textbooks took place in the 1930s and 1940s. Nurses were very confused about their own professional knowledge and expertise, which explains why they could not create a new nursing textbook despite the urgency. A brand new nursing textbook was published in 1967, about 30 years after the predecessor. Keyword: nurse, nurse training, nursing education, power, textbook, Michel Foucault

Econometric models of Finnish non-industrial private forest owners' timber supply and timber stock

This dissertation examines the short- and long-run impacts of timber prices and other factors affecting NIPF owners' timber harvesting and timber stocking decisions. The utility-based Faustmann model provides testable hypotheses of the exogenous variables retained in the timber supply analysis. The timber stock function, derived from a two-period biomass harvesting model, is estimated using a two-step GMM estimator based on balanced panel data from 1983 to 1991. Timber supply functions are estimated using a Tobit model adjusted for heteroscedasticity and nonnormality of errors based on panel data from 1994 to 1998. Results show that if specification analysis of the Tobit model is ignored, inconsistency and biasedness can have a marked effect on parameter estimates. The empirical results show that owner's age is the single most important factor determining timber stock; timber price is the single most important factor in harvesting decision. The results of the timber supply estimations can be interpreted using utility-based Faustmann model of a forest owner who values a growing timber in situ.

Bayesian fisheries stock assessment: integrating and updating knowledge

In this thesis the use of the Bayesian approach to statistical inference in fisheries stock assessment is studied. The work was conducted in collaboration of the Finnish Game and Fisheries Research Institute by using the problem of monitoring and prediction of the juvenile salmon population in the River Tornionjoki as an example application. The River Tornionjoki is the largest salmon river flowing into the Baltic Sea. This thesis tackles the issues of model formulation and model checking as well as computational problems related to Bayesian modelling in the context of fisheries stock assessment. Each article of the thesis provides a novel method either for extracting information from data obtained via a particular type of sampling system or for integrating the information about the fish stock from multiple sources in terms of a population dynamics model. Mark-recapture and removal sampling schemes and a random catch sampling method are covered for the estimation of the population size. In addition, a method for estimating the stock composition of a salmon catch based on DNA samples is also presented. For most of the articles, Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) simulation has been used as a tool to approximate the posterior distribution. Problems arising from the sampling method are also briefly discussed and potential solutions for these problems are proposed. Special emphasis in the discussion is given to the philosophical foundation of the Bayesian approach in the context of fisheries stock assessment. It is argued that the role of subjective prior knowledge needed in practically all parts of a Bayesian model should be recognized and consequently fully utilised in the process of model formulation.

Environmental factors and uncertainty in fisheries management in the northern Baltic Sea

The Baltic Sea is a geologically young, large brackish water basin, and few of the species living there have fully adapted to its special conditions. Many of the species live on the edge of their distribution range in terms of one or more environmental variables such as salinity or temperature. Environmental fluctuations are know to cause fluctuations in populations abundance, and this effect is especially strong near the edges of the distribution range, where even small changes in an environmental variable can be critical to the success of a species. This thesis examines which environmental factors are the most important in relation to the success of various commercially exploited fish species in the northern Baltic Sea. It also examines the uncertainties related to fish stocks current and potential status as well as to their relationship with their environment. The aim is to quantify the uncertainties related to fisheries and environmental management, to find potential management strategies that can be used to reduce uncertainty in management results and to develop methodology related to uncertainty estimation in natural resources management. Bayesian statistical methods are utilized due to their ability to treat uncertainty explicitly in all parts of the statistical model. The results show that uncertainty about important parameters of even the most intensively studied fish species such as salmon (Salmo salar L.) and Baltic herring (Clupea harengus membras L.) is large. On the other hand, management approaches that reduce uncertainty can be found. These include utilising information about ecological similarity of fish stocks and species, and using management variables that are directly related to stock parameters that can be measured easily and without extrapolations or assumptions.

Behavioural and physiological responses to predators of captive-bred Arctic charr: significance of genetics, learning and ontogeny

Predation forms one of the main selective forces in nature and in a vast number of prey species the behavioural responses form the main way to avoid predation. World wide numerous captive breeding programs are used to produce fish and other animal species for conservational reintroductions. However, rearing animals in the absence of predators in captivity has been shown to weaken their predator avoidance skills and lead to behavioural divergence between wild and captive-bred populations. In my thesis I studied the effects of predator odour exposures on antipredator behavioural and physiological responses of captive reared Saimaa Arctic charr. This charr population is the most endangered fish population in Finland and a sample of the remaining population has been taken to captive breeding and used for an extensive reintroduction program. Lowered responsiveness to predators is probably one of the major reasons for the poor survival probability of the charr after release into the wild. The main aims of my thesis were to explore the reasons for behavioural phenotypic variation in this charr population and whether naïve charr young could be trained to recognise their natural predators. The predator species in my thesis were burbot (Lota lota) and pikeperch (Sander lucioperca). In my thesis I showed that the captive-bred charr responded to chemical cues from burbot and pikeperch, but the magnitude of responses was linked to the predator species. The burbot odour increased the spatial odour avoidance of the charr young. On the other hand, in the pikeperch treatment charr reduced their relative swimming activity and tended to show more freezing behaviour relative to the burbot treatment. It seems evident that these different responses are related to the different hunting tactics of predator species. Furthermore, I detected wide between-family differences in antipredator responsiveness (i.e. inherited variation in antipredator behaviours) in this captive stock. Detected differences were greater in the response towards burbot than towards pikeperch. These results, in addition to predator-specific antipredator responses, suggest that there is a clear inherited component in antipredator responsiveness in Saimaa charr population and that the detected inherited differences could explain a part of the behavioural phenotypic variation in this population. In my thesis I also found out that both social learning and direct exposure to live predators enhance the antipredator responsiveness of charr young. In addition, I obtained indications that predator odour exposures (i.e. life-skills training) in alevin and fry stages can fine-tune the innate antipredator responsiveness of charr. Thus, all these methods have the potential to enhance the innate antipredator responsiveness of naïve charr young, possibly also improving the post-release survival of these trained individuals in the wild. However, the next logical phase would be to carry out large scale survival studies in the wild to test this hypothesis. Finally, the results of my thesis emphasize that possible long-term life-skills training methods should take into account not only the behavioural but also the physiological effects of training.

Essays on Stock Market Reactions to New Information

A functioning stock market is an essential component of a competitive economy, since it provides a mechanism for allocating the economy’s capital stock. In an ideal situation, the stock market will steer capital in a manner that maximizes the total utility of the economy. As prices of traded stocks depend on and vary with information available to investors, it is apparent that information plays a crucial role in a functioning stock market. However, even though information indisputably matters, several issues regarding how stock markets process and react to new information still remain unanswered. The purpose of this thesis is to explore the link between new information and stock market reactions. The first essay utilizes new methodological tools in order to investigate the average reaction of investors to new financial statement information. The second essay explores the behavior of different types of investors when new financial statement information is disclosed to the market. The third essay looks into the interrelation between investor size, behavior and overconfidence. The fourth essay approaches the puzzle of negative skewness in stock returns from an altogether different angle than previous studies. The first essay presents evidence of the second derivatives of some financial statement signals containing more information than the first derivatives. Further, empirical evidence also indicates that some of the investigated signals proxy risk while others contain information priced with a delay. The second essay documents different categories of investors demonstrating systematical differences in their behavior when new financial statement information arrives to the market. In addition, a theoretical model building on differences in investor overconfidence is put forward in order to explain the observed behavior. The third essay shows that investor size describes investor behavior very well. This finding is predicted by the model proposed in the second essay, and hence strengthens the model. The behavioral differences between investors of different size furthermore have significant economic implications. Finally, the fourth essay finds strong evidence of management news disclosure practices causing negative skewness in stock returns.

Essays on the Modeling and Prediction of Volatility and Higher Moments of Stock Returns (summary section only)

One of the most fundamental and widely accepted ideas in finance is that investors are compensated through higher returns for taking on non-diversifiable risk. Hence the quantification, modeling and prediction of risk have been, and still are one of the most prolific research areas in financial economics. It was recognized early on that there are predictable patterns in the variance of speculative prices. Later research has shown that there may also be systematic variation in the skewness and kurtosis of financial returns. Lacking in the literature so far, is an out-of-sample forecast evaluation of the potential benefits of these new more complicated models with time-varying higher moments. Such an evaluation is the topic of this dissertation. Essay 1 investigates the forecast performance of the GARCH (1,1) model when estimated with 9 different error distributions on Standard and Poor’s 500 Index Future returns. By utilizing the theory of realized variance to construct an appropriate ex post measure of variance from intra-day data it is shown that allowing for a leptokurtic error distribution leads to significant improvements in variance forecasts compared to using the normal distribution. This result holds for daily, weekly as well as monthly forecast horizons. It is also found that allowing for skewness and time variation in the higher moments of the distribution does not further improve forecasts. In Essay 2, by using 20 years of daily Standard and Poor 500 index returns, it is found that density forecasts are much improved by allowing for constant excess kurtosis but not improved by allowing for skewness. By allowing the kurtosis and skewness to be time varying the density forecasts are not further improved but on the contrary made slightly worse. In Essay 3 a new model incorporating conditional variance, skewness and kurtosis based on the Normal Inverse Gaussian (NIG) distribution is proposed. The new model and two previously used NIG models are evaluated by their Value at Risk (VaR) forecasts on a long series of daily Standard and Poor’s 500 returns. The results show that only the new model produces satisfactory VaR forecasts for both 1% and 5% VaR Taken together the results of the thesis show that kurtosis appears not to exhibit predictable time variation, whereas there is found some predictability in the skewness. However, the dynamic properties of the skewness are not completely captured by any of the models.

Finnish Short-Term Stock Returns

Functioning capital markets are a crucial part of a competitive economy since they provide the mechanisms to allocate resources. In order to be well functioning a capital market has to be efficient. Market efficiency is defined as a market where prices at any time fully reflect all available information. Basically, this means that abnormal returns cannot be predicted since they are dependent on future, presently unknown, information. The debate of market efficiency has been going on for several decades. Most academics today would probably agree that financial markets are reasonably efficient since virtually nobody has been able to achieve continuous abnormal positive returns. However, it is clear that a set of return anomalies exists, although they are apparently to small to enable substantial economic profit. Moreover, these anomalies can often be attributed to market design. The motivation for this work is to expand the knowledge of short-term trading patterns and to offer some explanations for these patterns. In the first essay the return pattern during the day is examined. On average stock prices move during two time periods of the day, namely, immediately after the opening and around the formal close of the market. Since stock prices, on average, move upwards these abnormal returns are generally positive and cause the distinct U-shape of intraday returns. In the second essay the results in the first essay are examined further. The return pattern around the former close is shown to partly be the result of manipulative action by market participants. In the third essay the focus is shifted towards trading patterns of the underlying stocks on days when index options and index futures on the stocks expire. Generally no expiration day effect was found. However, some indication of an expiration day effect was found when a large amount of open in- or at-the-money contracts existed. Also, the effects were likelier to be found for shares with high index-weight but fairly low trading volume. Last, in the forth essay the attention is turned to the behaviour of different tax clienteles around the dividend ex-day. Two groups of investors showed abnormal trading behaviour. Domestic non-financial investors, especially domestic companies, showed a dividend capturing behaviour, i.e. buying cum-dividend and selling ex-dividend shares. The opposite behaviour was found for foreign investors and domestic financial institutions. The effect was more notable for high yield, high volume stocks.

Essays on Stock Options, Incentives, and Managerial Action

Executive compensation and managerial behavior have received an increasing amount of attention in the financial economics literature since the mid 1970s. The purpose of this thesis is to extend our understanding of managerial compensation, especially how stock option compensation is linked to the actions undertaken by the management. Furthermore, managerial compensation is continuously and heatedly debated in the media and an emerging consensus from this discussion seems to be that there still exists gaps in our knowledge of optimal contracting. In Finland, the first executive stock options were introduced in the 1980s and throughout the last 15 years it has become increasingly popular for Finnish listed firms to use this type of managerial compensation. The empirical work in the thesis is conducted using data from Finland, in contrast to most previous studies that predominantly use U.S. data. Using Finnish data provides insight of how market conditions affect compensation and managerial action and provides an opportunity to explore what parts of the U.S. evidence can be generalized to other markets. The thesis consists of four essays. The first essay investigates the exercise policy of the executive stock option holders in Finland. In summary, Essay 1 contributes to our understanding of the exercise policies by examining both the determinants of the exercise decision and the markets reaction to the actual exercises. The second essay analyzes the factors driving stock option grants using data for Finnish publicly listed firms. Several agency theory based variables are found to have have explanatory power on the likelihood of a stock option grant. Essay 2 also contributes to our understanding of behavioral factors, such as prior stock return, as determinants of stock option compensation. The third essay investigates the tax and stock option motives for share repurchases and dividend distributions. We document strong support for the tax motive for share repurchases. Furthermore, we also analyze the dividend distribution decision in companies with stock options and find a significant difference between companies with and without dividend protected options. We thus document that the cutting of dividends found in previous U.S. studies can be avoided by dividend protection. In the fourth essay we approach the puzzle of negative skewness in stock returns from an altogether different angle than in previous studies. We suggest that negative skewness in stock returns is generated by management disclosure practices and find proof for this. More specifically, we find that negative skewness in daily returns is induced by returns for days when non-scheduled firm specific news is disclosed.

Essays on Stock Option Compensation and the Role of Incentives and Risk (summary section only)

Managerial pay-for-performance sensitivity has increased rapidly around the world. Early empirical research showed that pay-for-performance sensitivity resulting from stock ownership and stock options appeared to be quite low during the 1970s and early 1980s in the U.S. However, recent empirical research from the U.S. shows an enormous increase in pay-for-performance sensitivity. The global trend has also reached Finland, where stock options have become a major ingredient of executive compensation. The fact that stock options seem to be an appealing form of remuneration from a theoretical point of view combined with the observation that the use of this compensation form has increased significantly during the recent years, implies that research on the dynamics of stock option compensation is highly relevant for the academic community, as well as for practitioners and regulators. The research questions of the thesis are analyzed in four separate essays. The first essay examines whether stock option compensation practices of Finnish firms are consistent with predictions from principal-agent theory. The second essay explores one of the major puzzles in the compensation literature by studying determinants of stock option contract design. In theory, optimal contract design should vary according to firm characteristics. However, in the U.S., variation in contract design seems to be surprisingly low, a phenomenon generally attributed to tax and accounting considerations. In Finland, however, firms are not subject to stringent contracting restrictions, and the variation in contract design tends, in fact, to be quite substantial. The third essay studies the impact of price- and risk incentives arising from stock option compensation on firm investment. In addition, the essay explores one of the most debated questions in the literature, in particular, the relation between incentives and firm performance. Finally, several strands of literature in both economics and corporate finance hypothesize that economic uncertainty is related to corporate decision-making. Previous research has shown that risk tends to slow down firm investment. In the fourth essay, it is hypothesized that firm risk slows down growth from a more universal perspective. Consistent with this view, it is shown that risk not only tends to slow down firm investment, but also employment growth. Moreover, the essay explores whether the nature of firms’ compensation policies, in particular, whether firms make use of stock option compensation, affects the relation between risk and firm growth. In summary, the four essays contribute to the current understanding of stock options as a form of equity incentives, and how incentives and risk affect corporate decision-making. By this, the thesis promotes the knowledge related to the modern theory of the firm.

Three Essays on the Volatility of Finnish Stock Returns (summary section only)

First, in Essay 1, we test whether it is possible to forecast Finnish Options Index return volatility by examining the out-of-sample predictive ability of several common volatility models with alternative well-known methods; and find additional evidence for the predictability of volatility and for the superiority of the more complicated models over the simpler ones. Secondly, in Essay 2, the aggregated volatility of stocks listed on the Helsinki Stock Exchange is decomposed into a market, industry-and firm-level component, and it is found that firm-level (i.e., idiosyncratic) volatility has increased in time, is more substantial than the two former, predicts GDP growth, moves countercyclically and as well as the other components is persistent. Thirdly, in Essay 3, we are among the first in the literature to seek for firm-specific determinants of idiosyncratic volatility in a multivariate setting, and find for the cross-section of stocks listed on the Helsinki Stock Exchange that industrial focus, trading volume, and block ownership, are positively associated with idiosyncratic volatility estimates––obtained from both the CAPM and the Fama and French three-factor model with local and international benchmark portfolios––whereas a negative relation holds between firm age as well as size and idiosyncratic volatility.