Churches and the Victorian sports boom

Kirjallisuusarvostelu

Dynamic Hedging with Credit Default Swaps: Empirical Evidence from the European Monetary Union

This thesis investigates the effectiveness of time-varying hedging during the financial crisis of 2007 and the European Debt Crisis of 2010. In addition, the seven test economies are part of the European Monetary Union and these countries are in different economical states. Time-varying hedge ratio was constructed using conditional variances and correlations, which were created by using multivariate GARCH models. Here we have used three different underlying portfolios: national equity markets, government bond markets and the combination of these two. These underlying portfolios were hedged by using credit default swaps. Empirical part includes the in-sample and out-of-sample analysis, which are constructed by using constant and dynamic models. Moreover, almost in every case dynamic models outperform the constant ones in the determination of the hedge ratio. We could not find any statistically significant evidence to support the use of asymmetric dynamic conditional correlation model. In addition, our findings are in line with prior literature and support the use of time-varying hedge ratio. Finally, we found that in some cases credit default swaps are not suitable instruments for hedging and they act more as a speculative instrument.

A DNS Bases Approach To Electronic Persistance, or "If Your Pants Fit, Why Use Suspenders?"

Presentation at Open Repositories 2014, Helsinki, Finland, June 9-13, 2014

Raportti : performatiivista kulttuuria ja poliittisia performansseja

Performance, theatricality and the power of representation Helsingin yliopistossa ja Tvärminnen tutkimusasemalla 14.–16.11.2013.

Linguistic models for decision support

Linguistic modelling is a rather new branch of mathematics that is still undergoing rapid development. It is closely related to fuzzy set theory and fuzzy logic, but knowledge and experience from other fields of mathematics, as well as other fields of science including linguistics and behavioral sciences, is also necessary to build appropriate mathematical models. This topic has received considerable attention as it provides tools for mathematical representation of the most common means of human communication - natural language. Adding a natural language level to mathematical models can provide an interface between the mathematical representation of the modelled system and the user of the model - one that is sufficiently easy to use and understand, but yet conveys all the information necessary to avoid misinterpretations. It is, however, not a trivial task and the link between the linguistic and computational level of such models has to be established and maintained properly during the whole modelling process. In this thesis, we focus on the relationship between the linguistic and the mathematical level of decision support models. We discuss several important issues concerning the mathematical representation of meaning of linguistic expressions, their transformation into the language of mathematics and the retranslation of mathematical outputs back into natural language. In the first part of the thesis, our view of the linguistic modelling for decision support is presented and the main guidelines for building linguistic models for real-life decision support that are the basis of our modeling methodology are outlined. From the theoretical point of view, the issues of representation of meaning of linguistic terms, computations with these representations and the retranslation process back into the linguistic level (linguistic approximation) are studied in this part of the thesis. We focus on the reasonability of operations with the meanings of linguistic terms, the correspondence of the linguistic and mathematical level of the models and on proper presentation of appropriate outputs. We also discuss several issues concerning the ethical aspects of decision support - particularly the loss of meaning due to the transformation of mathematical outputs into natural language and the issue or responsibility for the final decisions. In the second part several case studies of real-life problems are presented. These provide background and necessary context and motivation for the mathematical results and models presented in this part. A linguistic decision support model for disaster management is presented here – formulated as a fuzzy linear programming problem and a heuristic solution to it is proposed. Uncertainty of outputs, expert knowledge concerning disaster response practice and the necessity of obtaining outputs that are easy to interpret (and available in very short time) are reflected in the design of the model. Saaty’s analytic hierarchy process (AHP) is considered in two case studies - first in the context of the evaluation of works of art, where a weak consistency condition is introduced and an adaptation of AHP for large matrices of preference intensities is presented. The second AHP case-study deals with the fuzzified version of AHP and its use for evaluation purposes – particularly the integration of peer-review into the evaluation of R&D outputs is considered. In the context of HR management, we present a fuzzy rule based evaluation model (academic faculty evaluation is considered) constructed to provide outputs that do not require linguistic approximation and are easily transformed into graphical information. This is achieved by designing a specific form of fuzzy inference. Finally the last case study is from the area of humanities - psychological diagnostics is considered and a linguistic fuzzy model for the interpretation of outputs of multidimensional questionnaires is suggested. The issue of the quality of data in mathematical classification models is also studied here. A modification of the receiver operating characteristics (ROC) method is presented to reflect variable quality of data instances in the validation set during classifier performance assessment. Twelve publications on which the author participated are appended as a third part of this thesis. These summarize the mathematical results and provide a closer insight into the issues of the practicalapplications that are considered in the second part of the thesis.

EU:n päästökaupan historia ja nykytila

Tässä työssä selvitetään, miten Euroopan Unionin päästökauppajärjestelmä on toiminut sen alusta vuodesta 2005 sen nykytilaan vuonna 2014. Erityisesti huomiota kiinnitetään päästöoikeuksien hintakehitykseen sekä käyttämättömien päästöoikeuksien kertymiseen. Työssä havaitaan, että ylimääräiset jaetut päästöoikeudet ovat aiheuttaneet päästöoikeuksien hinnan laskemista. Liian matalan hinnan seurauksena päästökauppa ei kannusta yrityksiä tekemään investointeja vihreään teknologiaan, vaikka se on yksi päästökauppajärjestelmän päätarkoitus YK:n ilmastosopimuksen täyttymisen varmistamisen ohella. Suurin syy käyttämättömien päästöoikeuksien kertymiseen on vuoden 2008 talouskriisi. Tätä ongelmaa korjataan väliaikaisesti siirtämällä päästöoikeuksia myöhemmin jaettavaksi. Lisää ratkaisuja odotetaan neljännelle päästökauppakaudelle.

Porous Bodies, Porous Minds. Emotions and the Supernatural in the Íslendingasögur (ca. 1200–1400)

In my PhD Thesis, I study the conceptions and representation of emotions in medieval 13th and 14th-century Iceland. I have used Icelandic saga literature as my source material and Icelandic Family sagas (Íslendingasögur) as my main sources. Firstly, I wished to explore in my study the medieval Icelandic folk theory of emotions: what emotions were thought to be, from what they originated and how they operated? Secondly, in earlier research it has been shown that emotions were seldom described in Íslendingasögur. They were mostly represented in dialogue, poetry or in somatic changes (e.g. turning pale). Consequently, I examined whether medieval Icelanders had alternative emotion discourses in literature, in addition to the usual manner of representation. My study consists of qualitative case studies, and I have analysed the sources intertextually. I suggest that medieval Icelanders regarded emotions as movements of the mind. The mind existed in the heart. As a consequence, emotions were considered physical in nature. The human body and therefore also the human mind was considered porous: if the mind of the person was not strong enough, supernatural agents and forces could penetrate theboundaries of his/her body as winds or sharp projectiles. Correspondingly, minds of strong-willed people could penetrate the minds of others. As a result, illness and emotions could upspring. People did not always distinguish between emotions and physical illnesses. Excessive emotions could cause illness, even death. Especially fear, grief and emotions of moral responsibility (e.g. guilt) made people vulnerable to the supernatural influence. Guilt was considered part of the emotional experience of misfortune (ógæfa), and in literature guilt could also be represented as eye pain that was inflicted upon the sufferer by a supernatural agent in a dream. Consequently, supernatural forces and beings were part of the upspring of emotions, but also part of the representation of emotions in literature: They caused the emotion but their presence also represented the emotional turmoil in the lives of the people that the supernatural agents harassed; emotions that had followed from norm transgressions, betrayal and other forms of social disequilibrium. Medieval readers and listeners of the Íslendingasögur were used to interpreting such different layers of meaning in texts.

Relay protection in active distribution networks

Increasingly growing share of distributed generation in the whole electrical power system’s generating system is currently a worldwide tendency, driven by several factors, encircling mainly difficulties in refinement of megalopolises’ distribution networks and its maintenance; widening environmental concerns adding to both energy efficiency approaches and installation of renewable sources based generation, inherently distributed; increased power quality and reliability needs; progress in IT field, making implementable harmonization of needs and interests of different-energy-type generators and consumers. At this stage, the volume, formed by system-interconnected distributed generation facilities, have reached the level of causing broad impact toward system operation under emergency and post-emergency conditions in several EU countries, thus previously implementable approach of their preliminary tripping in case of a fault, preventing generating equipment damage and disoperation of relay protection and automation, is not applicable any more. Adding to the preceding, withstand capability and transient electromechanical stability of generating technologies, interconnecting in proximity of load nodes, enhanced significantly since the moment Low Voltage Ride-Through regulations, followed by techniques, were introduced in Grid Codes. Both aspects leads to relay protection and auto-reclosing operation in presence of distributed generation generally connected after grid planning and construction phases. This paper proposes solutions to the emerging need to ensure correct operation of the equipment in question with least possible grid refinements, distinctively for every type of distributed generation technology achieved its technical maturity to date and network’s protection. New generating technologies are equivalented from the perspective of representation in calculation of initial steady-state short-circuit current used to dimension current-sensing relay protection, and widely adopted short-circuit calculation practices, as IEC 60909 and VDE 0102. The phenomenon of unintentional islanding, influencing auto-reclosing, is addressed, and protection schemes used to eliminate an sustained island are listed and characterized by reliability and implementation related factors, whereas also forming a crucial aspect of realization of the proposed protection operation relieving measures.

Herrnhutilaisuuden seulonta-aika uudelleen arvioitavana

Kirjallisuusarvostelu