The purpose of this paper is to estimate the effect of durable goods and ICT on Euro Area economic growth and productivity change; when expenditure on consumer durables is recorded as capital investment. The capitalization of consumer durables impacts both the levels and growth rates of the...

This study conducts an international comparison of productivity and profitability. First, the level and growth of productivity are compared in OECD countries for the period from 1975 to 2009. According to this comparison, productivity growth has been faster in the key Finnish sectors com-pared...

We analyse the development of labour productivity and hours worked by the working-aged population in the EU25 countries and other OECD countries in 1960-2004. We emphasise the possible effects of taxes, benefits and other labour-market variables. First, we describe the trends in productivity and...

Using data from the Finnish private sector, this paper shows that giving birth to a child has negative effects on the mothers wage. Analysis of the reasons for the wage penalty associated with motherhood suggests that the loss of human capital during the child-related career break is an...

Finnish value added per hour in 1997 was lower than it was in EU15, the US, Germany and Sweden. In manufacturing and in five of its sub-industries, as well as in construction and wholesale the Finnish level of labour productivity was higher than in the aforementioned countries. Finnish labour...

This paper is the first effort to analyze the intangible investments of the Finnish non-financial business sector in 19752005 with a heretofore unseen scope of intangible investments in line with the definition of Corrado, Hulten and Sichel (2005, 2006). Not only GDP but also investments have...

We assess Finland’s competitiveness in the light of various, mainly short-term indicators. It turns out that the weak export market performance over the last few years is linked to the deterioration of profitability of production in Finland. A better export and employment performance requires...

Radical innovations require risk-taking. However, it is hard to find an objective measure for innovation investments that would take riskiness into account. In this paper, we investigate how a simple measure of firms’ innovation investments, namely the employee share of managers and...

Recent macroeconomic literature has stressed the importance of resource allocation between firms for aggregate productivity. An important issue, therefore, is how to measure allocative efficiency. We compare popular indicators of allocative efficiency, paying special attention to firm turnover....

We analyse the Sigma convergence (standard deviation divided by average) of purchasing power adjusted GDP per capita and GDP per hour worked in the European Union. We also link the development in income distribution as measured by Gini coefficients to convergence. With short pauses, there has...