Tests for Cointegration Rank and the Initial Condition

Many economic events involve initial observations that substantially deviate from long-run steady state. Initial conditions of this type have been found to impact diversely on the power of univariate unit root tests, whereas the impact on multivariate tests is largely unknown. This paper investigates the impact of the initial condition on tests for cointegration rank. We compare the local power of the widely used likelihood ratio (LR) test with the local power of a test based on the eigenvalues of the companion matrix. We find that the power of the LR test is increasing in the magnitude of the initial condition, whereas the power of the other test is decreasing. The behaviour of the tests is investigated in an application to price convergence.

Marketing and the Logic of Service: Value Facilitation, Value Creation and Co-creation, and Their Marketing Implications

The discussion of a service-dominant logic has made the findings of decades of service marketing research a topic of interest for marketing at large. Some fundamental aspects of the logic such as value creation and its marketing implications are more complex than they have been treated as so far and need to be further developed to serve marketing theory and practice well. Following the analysis in the present article it is argued that although customers are co-producers in service processes, according to the value-in-use notion adopted in the contemporary marketing and management literature they are fundamentally the creators of value for themselves. Furthermore, it is concluded that although by providing goods and services as input resources into customers’ consumption and value-generating processes firms are fundamentally value facilitators, interactions with customers that exist or can be created enable firms to engage themselves with their customers’ processes and thereby they become co-creators of value with their customers. As marketing implications it is observed that 1) the goal of marketing is to support customers’ value creation, 2) following a service logic and due to the existence of interactions where the firm’s and the customer’s processes merge into an integrated joint value creation process, the firm is not restricted to making value propositions only, but can directly and actively influence the customer’s value fulfilment as well and extend its marketing process to include activities during customer-firm interactions, and 3) although all goods and services are consumed as service, customers’ purchasing decisions can be expected to be dependant of whether they have the skills and interest to use a resource, such as a good, as service or want to buy extended market offerings including process-related elements. Finally, the analysis concludes with five service logic theses.

Activityscape Mapping: Consumer Activity Systems as Service Context

Activity systems are the cognitively linked groups of activities that consumers carry out as a part of their daily life. The aim of this paper is to investigate how consumers experience value through their activities, and how services fit into the context of activity systems. A new technique for illustrating consumers’ activity systems is introduced. The technique consists of identifying a consumer’s activities through an interview, then quantitatively measuring how the consumer evaluates the identified activities on three dimensions: Experienced benefits, sacrifices and frequency. This information is used to create a graphical representation of the consumer’s activity system, an “activityscape map”. Activity systems work as infrastructure for the individual consumer’s value experience. The paper contributes to value and service literature, where there currently are no clearly described standardized techniques for visually mapping out individual consumer activity. Existing approaches are service- or relationship focused, and are mostly used to identify activities, not to understand them. The activityscape representation provides an overview of consumers’ perceptions of their activity patterns and the position of one or several services in this pattern. Comparing different consumers’ activityscapes, it shows the differences between consumers' activity structures, and provides insight into how services are used to create value within them. The paper is conceptual; an empirical illustration is used to indicate the potential in further empirical studies. The technique can be used by businesses to understand contexts for service use, which may uncover potential for business reconfiguration and customer segmentation.

International Portfolio Investments and The Informational Value of Trade

A large volume of literature suggests that information asymmetry resulting from the spatial separation between investors and investments have a significant impact on the composition of investors’ domestic and international portfolios. I show that institutional factors affecting trading in tangible goods help explain a substantial portion of investors’ spatial bias. More importantly, I demonstrate that an information flow medium with breadth and richness directly linked to the bilateral commitment of resources between countries, that I measure by their trading intensity in tangible goods, is consistent with the prevailing country allocation in investors’ international portfolios.

The Quest for Well-being in Growth Industries: Contexts, Research Design and Methodological Development

This Working Paper reports the background to the first stage of the ongoing research project, The Quest for Well-being in Growth Industries: A Collaborative Study in Finland and Scotland, conducted under the auspices of the Academy of Finland research programme The Future of Work and Well-being (2008-2011). This collaborative project provides national and transnational data, analysis and outputs. The study is being conducted in the Department of Management and Organisation, Hanken School of Economics, Finland, in collaboration with Glasgow Caledonian University, University of East London, Heriot-Watt University and Reading University, UK. The project examines policies and practices towards the enhancement of work-related well-being in growth industries, and contradictory pressures and tensions posed in this situation. The overall aim is to evaluate the development, implementation and use of work-related well-being policies in four selected growth industries. These sectors – electronics, care, finance and accounting, and tourism – have been selected on the basis of European Union and national forecasts, and demographic and socio-economic trends in employment. In this working paper we outline the background to the research study, the initial research plan, and how the survey of employers has been constructed. The working paper concludes with a brief discussion of general ongoing research issues arising in the project.

Mentoring in an Entrepreneurial Setting - The Mentor's Perspective

This paper discusses mentoring from the mentors' point of view in an entrepreneurial setting. The aim of the paper is to present why mentoring can be considered important for entrepreneurs who are mentors and under what circumstances mentoring is valuable for the mentor. A pilot mentorprogramme was conducted among women entrepreneurs during 1998. A study was made in order to examine the mentors’ perception of the programme. Firstly mentoring and entrepreneurship in Finland are discussed briefly. Secondly the results of the study are presented. The results of the study show that mentoring can be valuable for the mentors both on a vocational and a personal level. However, it is important to choose the mentees of the programme on a rather strict basis. The results demonstrate a need to be careful in choosing mentees.

Samarbete mellan konkurrenter - en undersökning av österbottniska sm-företag

Under senare tid har förekomsten av samarbete mellan konkurrerande sm-företag ökat. Forskningen kring ämnet har dock bedrivits i mindre skala, framför allt om man beaktar finländska (nordiska) förhållanden. Syftet med denna undersökning är att kartlägga förekomsten av samarbete mellan konkurrerande sm-företag i Österbotten (Finland), samt beskriva dessa. Gällande demografiska variabler jämförs dessa företag även med sm-företag som inte samarbetar. Data insamlades genom en enkät utskickad i november 2001 till 345 sm-företag i Österbotten. Svarsprocenten var 35.1. Av de respondenter som besvarade enkäten, var 47.9 procent involverade i ett eller flera samarbeten med ett eller flera företag som var deras konkurrenter. Samarbete mellan konkurrenter är således inte ett ovanligt fenomen, utan innefattar allt från informella, operativa samarbeten till formella, strategiskt viktiga samarbeten. Samarbete inom produktion var den mest vanligt förekommande formen av samarbete. Partnern kom från Finland, även om målmarknaderna för samarbetet fanns både i Finland och i utlandet. Denna undersökning kunde inte identifiera någon större skillnad mellan de sm-företag som samarbetade med konkurrenter och de sm-företag som inte samarbetade. Det intressanta är således att det inte verkar finnas några skillnader vad gäller ålder, omsättning, omsättningsökning, underleverans- och exportverksamhet mellan de samarbetande och de icke samarbetande företagen. Skillnaderna bör således sökas i andra variabler. Den enda signifikanta skillnaden kunde upptäckas i upplevelsen av konkurrens. Tidigare forskning har identifierat att osäkerhet i konkurrensen är ett incitament till att börja samarbeta med konkurrenter. Denna undersökning förstärker detta antagande. De samarbetande företagen upplevde att konkurrensen var hårdare än de icke samarbetande företagen. Bland de samarbetande företagen var det speciellt de mindre (med en personalstyrka mellan 10 och 50 arbetstagare) som upplevde att konkurrensen var hård. Undersökningen har finansierats med stipendiemedel från Sparbanksstiftelsen i Vasa och Handlande Gustav Svanljungs fond.