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

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

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

The Impact of Stock Market Jumps on Time-Varying Return Correlations: Empirical Evidence from the Baltic Countries

In this paper we study the impact of market jumps on the time varying return correlations between stock market indices in the Baltic countries. An EARJI-EGARCH model facilitating direct modelling of the time varying return correlations is introduced. The empirical results indicate that there is a quite large number of identi…ed jumps in the emerging Baltic stock markets. The main …nding is that isolated market jumps in one of the markets generally have no or small e¤ects on the time-varying correlations. In contrast, simultaneous jumps of equal sign increase the average correlation, in some cases with as much as 100 percent.Correlated jumps; contagion

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