The median age of the global population is presently increasing by nearly three months every year. Over the next couple of decades, almost every country in the world is set to experience an unprecedented increase in the share of elderly population. This development has the potential to...

The possible participation of Finland in the Stage III of the European Monetary Union would constitute a major change in the operating environment of the Finnish economy. As a member of the common currency area, Finnish interest and exchange rates would no longer be determined by domestic...

This study of markups, ie prices over marginal costs in manufacturing industries, builds on the work of Robert Hall and Werner Roeger. We analyze several methods used in estimating sectoral markups, and then apply them to empirical analysis of the industrial sectors of six EU countries (Germany,...

In this study, we analyse variation of markups in Finnish industrial sectors, both between industries and over time. The study finds evidence that: - Since the beginning the 1980s, practically every Finnish industrial sector has been able to extract a positive markup. - The average industrial...

It has become a conventional wisdom in economic policy debate that in order to minimise adverse effects on employment, unemployment benefits should decrease with the unemployment spell. This paper, using a series of simple search models, shows that the theoretical result regarding the optimality...

In this paper we analyse the empirical relevance of the mechanisms through which the Bank of Finland's actions are transmitted to the Finnish economy. We concentrate on the first stage of the monetary policy transmission mechanism; namely, the effect of the Bank's actions on domestic market...

The objective of this paper is to empirically analyze and quantify the effect of changes in the supply of bank credit on private investment. Particular interest is placed on the role of the credit crunch in explaining the collapse in private investment in the early 1990s. Using a vector...