Journal Staff

This paper addresses human capital in the Arctic in relation to tourism. More specifically, with an ever-increasing number oftourists recognizing the attractiveness of the Arctic, tour companies are increasingly recognizing the opportunities. The media(typically southern media) sells the image, either before or after the tourists arrive, and communities are often left to deal with therepercussions – whether those are social, economic, environmental, or the like. Many of the repercussions are negative; however,even when perceived as positive they can create tensions within small communities and showcase a variety of capacity issues.This paper focuses on the realities and possibilities of tourism in the Arctic. It offers an up-to-date descriptive overview of tourismnumbers and valuations. In addition, ‘realities’ also focuses on the current suite of challenges and ‘possibilities’ addresses criticalquestions that need to be asked as tourism grows. We are in an uncertain age and academic critique of the Arctic tourismphenomenon is growing as quickly as the numbers. This paper is almost fully circumpolar in outlook, written by individuals fromthose jurisdictions, and aims to intersect with other sectors active in the Arctic

Impact of Political News on the Baltic State Stock Markets

This paper studies the link between political news releases, and the returns and volatilities in the stock markets of Riga, Tallinn and Vilnius. Political news releases are viewed as proxies for political risk. The results indicate that political news events regarding domestic and foreign, excluding Russia, political issues led, on average, to lower uncertainty in the stock markets of Riga and Tallinn in 2001-2003. At the same time, political risk from Russia increased the volatility of the stock market in Tallinn. We found that there is only a weak relationship between political risks of different origins and the stock market volatility in the Baltic states in 2004-2007. In addition, we found a significant Monday effect, consistent with the trading behavior of institutional investors.Public information arrival; political risk; volatility; multivariate GARCH

Financial Intermediation and Economic Growth: Evidence from the Baltic countries

The hypothesis that financial development promotes economic growth is largely supported by empirical studies. This hypothesis is tested for the three Baltic countries using a time series approach that allows for interactions between the three countries. We find that economic growth is a positive function of financial development, proxied by banking credit available to private sector, in the long run. The results also show that there are long run interactions between the three Baltic countries.Cointegration; Spillovers; Financial development; Emerging markets

Master\u27s Recital

List of performers and performances

Markovian Nash equilibrium in financial markets with asymmetric information and related forward-backward systems

This paper develops a new methodology for studying continuous-time Nash equilibrium in a financial market with asymmetrically informed agents. This approach allows us to lift the restriction of risk neutrality imposed on market makers by the current literature. It turns out that, when the market makers are risk averse, the optimal strategies of the agents are solutions of a forward-backward system of partial and stochastic differential equations. In particular, the price set by the market makers solves a nonstandard "quadratic" backward stochastic differential equation. The main result of the paper is the existence of a Markovian solution to this forward-backward system on an arbitrary time interval, which is obtained via a fixed-point argument on the space of absolutely continuous distribution functions. Moreover, the equilibrium obtained in this paper is able to explain several stylized facts which are not captured by the current asymmetric information models.Comment: Published at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/15-AAP1138 in the Annals of Applied Probability (http://www.imstat.org/aap/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Markov bridges: SDE representation

Let $X$ be a Markov process taking values in $\mathbf{E}$ with continuous paths and transition function $(P_{s,t})$. Given a measure $\mu$ on $(\mathbf{E}, \mathscr{E})$, a Markov bridge starting at $(s,\varepsilon_x)$ and ending at $(T^*,\mu)$ for $T^* <\infty$ has the law of the original process starting at $x$ at time $s$ and conditioned to have law $\mu$ at time $T^*$. We will consider two types of conditioning: a) {\em weak conditioning} when $\mu$ is absolutely continuous with respect to $P_{s,t}(x,\cdot)$ and b) {\em strong conditioning} when $\mu=\varepsilon_z$ for some $z \in \mathbf{E}$. The main result of this paper is the representation of a Markov bridge as a solution to a stochastic differential equation (SDE) driven by a Brownian motion in a diffusion setting. Under mild conditions on the transition density of the underlying diffusion process we establish the existence and uniqueness of weak and strong solutions of this SDE.Comment: A missing reference is adde

Risk management of commercial banks in Kosovo

Purpose: This research elaborated on the management of the activity of banks operating in Kosovo. Design/Methodology/Approach: The study provided for the secondary service by reporting goals for the four largest banks in Kosovo. Findings: Problems of commercial banks of Kosovo in managing risks for establishing concepts for managing the activity, defects of the activity management system and backwardness of the research and method of managing the activity. Practical Implications: With the continued development of the financial sector, commercial banks in Kosovo have formed a series of strict risk management systems, while the risk management of commercial banks in Kosovo is still in its infancy. As Kosovo's financial industry is opening up to the outside world, Kosovo's banking industry faces increasingly fierce competition and the risks are also more complex. In this case, understanding the level of risk management of commercial banks in Kosovo and improving the level of risk management is a necessary topic. Originality/Value: The results of the study realize a series of meaningful suggestions are put forward and help to improve the risk management level and control the risks effectively.peer-reviewe

Influence of News in Moscow and New York on Returns and Risks on Baltic State Stock Indices

The impact of news of the Moscow and New York stock market exchanges on the returns and volatilities of the Baltic state stock market indices is studied using daily return data for the period of 2000-2005. A nonlinear time series model that accounts for asymmetries in the conditional mean and variance functions is used for the em- pirical work. News from New York have stronger effect on returns in Tallinn, than news from Moscow. High risk shocks in New York have a strong impact on volatility in Tallinn, whereas volatility of Vilnius is more influenced by high risk shocks from Moscow. Riga seems to be autonomous to news arriving from abroad.Estonia; Latvia; Lithuania; Time series; Estimation; Finance