Juha Pekka Junttila

• PhD in Economics
• Professor at University of Oulu

This paper examines the Central Bank of Russia's (CBR) foreign exchange (FX) policy response to the 2022 Western financial sanctions imposed following the invasion of Ukraine. Using a non-Gaussian Bayesian Structural Vector Autoregression model, we identify the roles of geopolitical risk, commodity terms of trade, FX reserves, interest rate differe...

We analyze ESG-based investments in stocks across 23 developed markets using daily data from 2004 to 2022. The findings suggest a weak relationship between the ESG ratings and expected returns, with some evidence of modest underperformance of high ESG stocks compared to lower-rated ones in specific periods. This outcome indicates that stock prices...

The calculation of reformed EURIBOR rates employs a hybrid methodology based on borrowing transactions by Panel Banks through eligible instruments, capturing competitive unsecured euro money market activity. This paper analyzes the dynamic dependencies between the slopes of the EURIBOR term structure and key underlying instruments, including financ...

Based on a strongly data-intensive machine learning approach, this study first identifies the most essential globally traded commodities in view of their role for the global macroeconomic performance. At the second stage we estimate a global vector autoregressive model to assess in more detail these global reactions. Our results from the first stag...

This paper investigates the persistence of ESG news' effects on US stock returns. Utilizing a rolling-portfolio approach to calculate overlapping returns of news-based portfolios, extending up to twelve months post-news release, we find that market reactions to ESG news are fleeting and reversing within a month in the most recent sample period. Thi...

We identify the most significant factors that have influenced the profitability of European banking sector during the negative interest rate period (NIRP), with a particular focus on the bank size, loan portfolio quality, ownership structure, and location. Based on a panel dataset from 560 banks and 35 countries for the years 2010-2019, excluding t...

This study analyses the impact of different uncertainties on commodity markets to assess commodity markets' hedging or safe-haven properties. Using time-varying dynamic conditional correlation and wavelet-based Quantile-on-Quantile regression models, our findings show that, both before and during the COVID-19 crisis, soybeans and clean energy stock...

We analyze the return and volatility connectedness of the rising green asset and the well-established US industry stock and commodity markets from September 2010 to July 2021. We find that the time-varying return and volatility connectedness have exhibited serious crisis jumps. Some individual assets of both the green and commodity markets are in c...

We study the dependence of renewable energy production-related critical metal futures and producer equity returns, compared to the non-renewable energy (oil and natural gas) and some other globally relevant commodity markets. We find different asymmetric and symmetric dependencies in these commodity markets. The dependence is asymmetric in the most...

We analyse the effects of low and negative interest rates and sovereign risk premium on bank profitability among 154 Eurozone banks during the period 2005–2019. In contrast to some of the results in the previous literature, we find that the euro area banks have not suffered too much from the extremely low and negative interest rate era regarding th...

We examine ESG-based investment performance in 48 countries using data from two providers: MSCI ESG IVA and Refinitiv ASSET4. Developed markets’ high ESG-rated portfolios underperform compared to low-rated portfolios, in line with investors’ demands for higher returns as compensation for exposure to ESG-related risk or investors’ non-pecuniary moti...

This paper provides novel evidence on commodity market exposure, i.e., the impacts of commodity price and terms of trade fluctuations on macro performance amongst 46 emerging and developing countries (EMDCs) in Africa, Asia and the Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) region. We estimate the exposure of six macroeconomic variables to the commodity pr...

This supplementary material contains additional results for the article; Assessing the Commodity Market Price and Terms of Trade Exposures of Macroeconomy in Emerging and Developing Countries, which can be accessed on the publisher’s website

We investigate the relationship between energy commodities bases, inventory and financial stress from 1994 to 2018. We find that, from the 1998 Asian crisis the effect of financial stress on energy commodities bases gradually increased and from the 2008 crisis became positive, while the effect of inventory showed a gradual decline over time. The re...

This paper investigates the volatility processes of stablecoins and their potential stochastic interdependencies with Bitcoin volatility. We employ a novel approach to choose the optimal combination for the power law exponent and the minimum value for the volatilities bending the power law. Our results indicate that Bitcoin volatility is well-behav...

Based on quarterly data from the US commercial real estate market we find that a short position on the Dow-Jones US Real Estate index (DJUSRE) can serve as a useful and effective hedge against the price risk of U.S. direct commercial real estate investments. According to our results, when utilizing the DCC-GARCH-models in the empirical analysis, co...

We analyse the effects of sovereign risk premium on bank profitability amongst 154 Eurozone banks during the period 2005-2019. In contrast to some of the results in the previous literature, we find that the euro area banks have not suffered too much from the extremely low and negative interest rate era regarding their net internet margins. However,...

This paper analyses the profitability of Finnish cooperative banks during the period of negative nominal interest rates. Contrary to expectations, the continuous decline in money market interest rates between 2009 and 2014, and the following negative rate era, did not have adverse effects on the profitability of banks at the beginning of negative i...

Using an extended version of the Gordon dividend discount model, the large falls in the U.S. and European stock market assets at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic are found to be the result of pricing expected future falls in real economic activity caused by the global shock. The subsequent boom in asset markets and reductions in volatility im...

This paper investigates the volatility processes of stablecoins and their potential stochastic interdependencies with Bitcoin volatility. We employ a novel approach to choose the optimal combination for the power law exponent and the minimum value for the volatilities bending the power law. Our results indicate that Bitcoin volatility is well-behav...

This is the first paper that explores lottery-like demand in cryptocurrency markets. Since recent research provides evidence that cryptocurrency returns appear to be short-memory processes, we modify Bali, Cakici and Whitelaw’s (2011) and Bali, Brown, Murray, and Tang’s (2017) MAX measure and employ a weekly forecast horizon and daily log-returns f...

This study examines the role of asset liquidity in Western European banks’ credit rating downgrades and upgrades over the 2005–2017 period. The results suggest that changes in bank credit ratings have been more favorable for banks that have a liquid asset portfolio. Furthermore, asset liquidity has a stronger effect on the credit rating of banks th...

ABSTRACT We analyse how the future real economic activity is discounted to the current value of stocks in the US and European markets, and find that the extraordinary threat on future real GDP growth caused by the COVID-19 pandemic was obviously one of the main factors that affected the deep dive in the valuation of stock market assets at the begin...

Strongly revised second version of the manuscript previously titled 'COVID-19 and the Power of Discounting in Stock Markets'

This is the first paper that explores lottery-like demand in cryptocurrency markets. Since recent research provides evidence that cryptocurrency returns are rather short-memory processes in their nature, we modify Bali et al.'s (2011, 2017) MAX measure and employ a weekly forecast horizon and last week's daily log-returns for calculating the metric...

The paper re‐examines the Finnish Great Depression of the 1990s, based on an open macro model, with specific dummy variables to identify the initial effects of liberalized financial markets and capital mobility, and of the Russian trade collapse. It is shown that the explosive credit expansion resulting from the simultaneous liberalization of the f...

We examine the determinants of national sectoral net financial wealth in a panel of OECD and some developing countries. Using several panel data estimation methods for an unbalanced panel mostly covering the period from 2001 to 2013, we provide robust and novel evidence on the role of household equity market allocation as the main determinant of th...

Contrary to expectations, the continuous decline in money market interest rates between 2009 and 2014, and the following negative era for European interbank markets, has positively affected profitability of Finnish cooperative banks. We obtain these results that contrast sharply with previous studies' findings especially by using a risk-adjusted me...

Given that, nowadays, 40% of the US corn crop is used for biofuel production, there is a growing concern that the rise in biofuel production might lead to an increase in food prices. However, it is also obvious that significant growth in biofuel use has minimized the demand for fossil fuel and has hence reduced the volume of carbon emissions. It is...

We find that ten emerging stock markets have high risk of contagion on the regional level but lower spillover with respect to the global markets, implying a potential for diversification benefits between emerging and global markets. Regional market integration seems to have been caused by trade integration, which has a policy implication for trade...

Recently introduced measures for economic policy uncertainty (EPU), included in the data from 1997 to 2016, have a role in forecasting out-of-sample values for future real economic activity for both the euro area and UK economies. The inclusion of EPU measures, either for the US, the UK or for overall European economies, improves the forecasting ab...

The growing interest in biofuel as a green energy source has intensified the linkages between corn and ethanol markets, especially in the United States that represents the largest producing and exporting country for ethanol in the world. In this study, we examine the effect of corn market uncertainty on the price changes of US ethanol applying a se...

We find that the pricing of Finnish electricity market futures has been inefficient during the latest 10 years, when the trading volumes of Electricity Price Area Differentials (EPADs) have more than doubled. Even though the calculated futures premium on EPADs is related to some risk measures and the variables capturing the demand and supply condit...

Based on daily data from 1989 to 2016 we find that the correlations between gold and oil market futures and equity returns in the aggregate US market, and specifically in the energy sector stocks have changed strongly during the stock market crisis periods. The correlation between crude oil futures and aggregate US equities increases in crisis peri...

We analyze the effects of stock market and exchange rate information in a forward-looking Taylor rule for monthly data from 14 OECD countries during the years 1999–2016. Especially the stock market information in the form of dividend but also the currency market information in the form of real exchange rate are revealed to be relevant in Taylor rul...

During the pre-EMU period real effective exchange rate or domestic and foreign GDP per capita growth rate differential Granger-caused aggregate trade balance in most of the EMU-12 countries. However, our data-driven paper provides evidence that during the EMU period neither the growth differentials nor the CPI-based real effective exchange rates ha...

Using time series analysis on a theoretical open macro model we reexamine the role of the collapse of Soviet/Russian trade in the Finnish depression of the 1990's. We find that the strong credit expansion resulting from the simultaneous liberalization of the domestic financial markets and international capital movements in 1986 played the most impo...

In this paper we analyze the role of various kinds of shocks on the dynamic relationships between some financial market sectors. Our novel approach is to analyze the interactions between the stock market and the ultimate safe haven, i.e., the gold market, and the investors' risk evaluations measured by two forward looking variables: the VIX volatil...

During the pre-EMU period changes in real effective exchange rate or faster-than-trading-partners growth rates Granger caused changes in trade balance in most of the EMU-12 countries. However, our data driven article provides evidence that after the adoption of euro, these Granger causalities disappeared. We decompose trade balances into intra bala...

During the pre-EMU period trade balances responded to changes in real effective exchange rates or faster-than-trading-partners growth rates in most of the EMU-12 countries. However, our paper provides evidence that after the adoption of euro, there has not been any dynamic feedback from real effective exchange rates or growth differentials to trade...

The paper reexamines the role of the collapse of Soviet/Russian trade in the Finnish depression of the 1990's, using time series analysis based on a theoretical open macro model. It is shown that empirically, the strong credit expansion resulting from the simultaneous liberalization of the domestic financial markets and international capital moveme...

During the pre-EMU period changes in real effective exchange rate or faster-than-trading-partners growth rates Granger caused changes in trade balance in most of the EMU-12 countries. However, our data driven article provides evidence that after the adoption of euro, these Granger causalities disappeared. We decompose trade balances into intra bala...

In this article, we propose to augment the traditional relationship between real exchange rates and real interest rates (RERI) by adding the stock market equilibrium condition to it. We introduce the relative dividend yield as the new information variable. In the empirical analysis, we use recent monthly observations from the UK, Japan, Canada and...

The role of stock and currency market information in a forward-looking Taylor rule is analysed for monthly data from 13 OECD countries and the U.S. during the years 1988-2012. Based on a simple set of partial equilibrium conditions we fi…nd that the stock market information in the form of dividend yield and the currency market information in the fo...

In this paper we analyze the existence of nonlinear relationships between macroeconomic fundamentals and exchange rates for some major industrialized countries using an error correction model with time-varying parameters for the post Bretton Woods period. We find that inflation rate differentials with respect to the US inflation rate are the drivin...

In this paper we propose to augment the traditional relationship between real exchange rates and real interest rates (RERI) by adding the stock market equilibrium condition to it. We introduce the relative dividend yield as the new information variable. In the empirical analysis we use recent monthly observations from the U.K., Japan, Canada and Eu...

We examine exchange rate pass-through into aggregate import prices for several industrialized countries in view of Taylor’s (2000) suggestion that the degree of pass-through is dependent on importing country inflation. Extending the standard mark-up pricing model under monopolistic competition towards a setting where the pricing decision is depende...

Building on an extension of the Gordon (1962) growth model we propose a simple approach to forecasting real growth, inflation and real exchange rate. This extension is rooted in introducing the Fisher (1930) and Euler equations, and in the open economy context, also the purchasing power parity (PPP) and the uncovered interest rate parity (UIP) rela...

In this paper we build an open economy extension of the Gordon (1962) valuation model that suggests a simple forecasting system for three macroeconomic variables; the real growth, inflation and real exchange rate. All the forecasting equations in our system utilize current financial market information in the form of dividend yields and short-term i...

In this paper we build an open economy extension of the Gordon (1962) valuation model that suggests a simple forecasting system for three macroeconomic variables; the real growth, inflation and real exchange rate. All the forecasting equations in our system utilize current financial market information in the form of dividend yields and short-term i...

Using Economic Tracking Portfolios (ETP), I find that it is possible to forecast future values of inflation and changes in industrial production in the United States and three core euro countries – Italy, France and Germany – utilizing only current and past financial market information. The longer the forecasting horizon, the better the forecasts b...

This paper investigates the role of the financial environment in the stock market valuation of research and development (R&D) spending by firms. We examine the importance of equity financing relative to bank financing and the importance of both relative to the size of the economy on the stock market valuation of R&D expenditures. Empirical analysis...

This paper investigates the contemporaneous stock market response to financial analysts' perceptions of the firm and accounting earnings in the telecommunication and electronics industry in Finland. Analysts' perceptions used in the study are based on the Most Admired Companies survey similar to that conducted by Fortune magazine in the United Stat...

We analyze the effect of declining macro-economic risk to the country-wide cost of equity capital. Our empirical results indicate that the earnings capitalization rates derived from a standard equity valuation model increased especially in the EMU countries during the EMU convergence period. Corresponding increase was not observed in our control sa...

In this paper we use an economic tracking portfolio (ETP) approach for forecasting future values of macroeconomic variables in the IT-intensive Finnish stock market. The results confirm recently obtained conclusions in Lamont [J. Econ. 105 (2001) 161] and Hayes [Bank of England Working Paper 137/2001] that ETPs contain relevant information about ma...

Using a battery of simple unit root test procedures with alternative null hypotheses we find some evidence of speculative bubbles in the Finnish stock market for monthly data on industry portfolio returns from the 1990's. The bubbles seem to be present in the information technology (IT) returns and only during years 1997 - 2000. Furthermore, via th...

Using recently developed modelling methodology of Economic Tracking Portfolios (ETP), we find that it is possible to forecast future values of inflation and changes in industrial production in the United States and at least three core euro countries – Italy, France and Germany – utilising only current and past financial market information. The long...

In this paper we use an economic tracking portfolio (ETP) approach for forecasting future values of macroeconomic variables in the IT-sensitive Finnish stock market. The results confirm recently obtained conclusions in Lamont (2001), Hayes (2001) and Junttila (2002) that ETPs contain relevant information about macroeconomic variables. According to...

We augment the famous Fisher hypothesis for a small open economy by introducing foreign interest rate and exchange variables to the traditional test equation of the hypothesis. Using the Johansen cointegration method for the Finnish money market interest rate data we find that it is possible to find a positive long-run relationship between nominal...

Via the use of the rolling regression technique and a specific procedure for analysing strong structural breaks in a univariate time series model, we forecast the rate of future inflation in Finland for the time period of unregulated financial markets since the beginning of 1987. The identified structural changes in the data generating process (DGP...

Using a Markov-switching regime change model applied to Finnish money market interest spreads we find that unobserved changes from tightening to loosening monetary policy are important when examining the explanatory power of interest rates on future inflation changes. The unobserved regime changes are revealed ex ante (3 - 4 months ahead) with resp...

In this paper we augment the famous Fisher hypothesis by introducing foreign interest rate and exchange rate variables to a tradional Fisherian test equation for the Finnish money market interest rates. Theoretically this augmentation is based on the use of uncovered interest rate parity for nominal rates and certain assumptions concerning the form...

In this paper we give an overview of the recent Finnish studies considering the relationships between macroeconomic variables and stock market returns. We are especially concentrating on the studies utilizing the Arbitrage Pricing Theory by Ross (1976) and more specifically, the studies where the role of macroeconomic variables in return generating...

Via the use of rolling regression technique and a specific procedure for analyzing strong structural breaks in a univariate time series model, we forecast the rate of future inflation in Finland for the time period of unregulated financial markets since the beginning of 1987. We are able to label the identified structural changes in the data genera...