This dissertation is a collection of three studies whose central theme is the business subsidies policy implemented in Finland during the 1990s by the ministry of Trade and Industry (KTM). The purpose is to examine whether the policy is effective and at the same time explain the rationale behind...

In this paper we explore how the environment offered by institutions influences long-run growth. In order for the estimation results to be trustworthy we control the reliability of the estimates in several ways. Firstly, we include the lagged level of output per worker in the model to control...

The relationship between product market competition (PMC) and innovative activity has attracted the attention of many economists lately. In this study we elaborate the theory of Aghion et al. (1997, 2001) of an inverted-U relationship between competition and innovations. We provide a theoretical...

This is an evaluation study which examines the financing process through which Finnish enterprises apply and receive business subsidies from the central government. It examines comprehensively the three entities involved when this type of state aid is distributed in Finland, namely the applicant...

In the 1990's, economic conditions have become substantially better in South America. Many countries in the region have opened their trade policies and privatized their economies. The prospects for growth during the next decade appear encouraging. This, however, will require national and foreign...

The structural changes of the CIS mining industry have far-reaching consequences not only for the national economies of the member states but for the entire international metal market. Political instability and absence of a detailed and modern mining legislation make difficult a coordinated...

This PhD thesis is a collection of studies on Finnish municipal expenditures, revenues and intergovernmental grants. The main purpose of the study was to analyse the municipal expenditure variation between the matching grants system and the formula based grants system. The aim was also to...

The study attempts to apply William Niskanen's (1971) theory of budget maximising bureaucrats to the business subsidies policy implemented in Finland, by one of the major distributor of subsidies to firms, the ministry of Trade and Industry (KTM). The empirical analysis is based on records of 15...

This paper contains a set of tests for nonlinearities in economic time series. The tests comprise both standard diagnostic tests for revealing nonlinearities and some new developments in modelling nonlinearities. The latter test procedures make use of models in chaos, theory, so-called...

This paper examines the determinants of self-employment and transitions from wage work to self-employment using two sets of Finnish data from the 1990?s. The results show that capital constraints have only a minor effect on new business starts. Human capital, in the form of intergenerational...