An analysis of Finnish investors’ stock trades shows that they realize losses more than gains towards the end of December. Moreover, they repurchase the same stocks recently sold. The repurchase rate depends on loss magnitude, firm size, and how late in the year the sale takes place. This trading pattern generates net tax-loss buying pressure that is negative prior to the turn of the year and positive afterwards. Cross-sectional regressions indicate that stock returns around the turn of the year, particularly for small firms, are related to net tax-loss buying pressure but not to firm size per se.

This study analyzes the automobile purchase behavior of all residents of two Finnish provinces over several years. It finds that a consumer's purchases are strongly influenced by the purchases of his neighbors, particularly purchases in the recent past and by neighbors who are geographically most proximate. Most of the evidence points to information sharing rather than envy as a generator of consumer preferences.

We contribute to the debate on the optimal design of multiunit auctions by developing and testing robust implications of the leading theory of uniform price auctions on the bid distributions submitted by individual bidders. The theory, which emphasizes market power, has little support in a dataset of Finnish Treasury auctions. A reason may be that the Treasury acts strategically by determining supply after observing bids, apparently taking into account that the auctions are part of a repeated game between the Treasury and the primary dealers. Bidder behavior and underpricing are affected by the volatility of bond returns in a way that suggests bidders adjust for the winner’s curse.