After the Economic Crisis in early 1990s the Finnish economy has recovered rapidly, and simultaneously a major period of equalization from the mid 1970s to the mid 1990s has been reversed, taking the levels of the Gini coefficient in a few years back to levels of inequality found 30 years ago....

This paper presents a model where the central government cannot ensure that regional governments manage risks prudentially, due to soft budget constraint. Competition for project funding induces the regional governments use financial instruments as commitment devices as a signal of prudential...

We study the earnings losses of Finnish private sector workers who lost their jobs at two very different points in the business cycle. The first group was displaced in 1992 (depression period) and the second one in 1997 (recovery period). The focal point of the analysis is the quantile...

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 deals with fiscal policy coordination. In particular, it focuses on the question of how fiscal policy can be coordinated inside EMU, where countries still differ considerably in terms of cyclical behaviour and importance of country-specific shocks and well as the fiscal policy...

This paper looks at the role of network effects in telecommunications markets. Network effects are said to exist when an existing user of a network benefits from any new user to the network. Even the expectation of a large network will positively influence users' willingness to pay. After the...

In this paper we describe the compiling of the integrated data which comprises longitudinal information on Finnish companies and workers. The company panel of the data is dynamically representative over time and covers a wide range of the economy. The worker panel covers in principle all people...

This study deals with the matter to what extent the costs of the EU Emission Trade System (EU ETS) end up in the electricity prices. The study encompasses both a theoretical and an empirical review of electricity price formation. It includes an econometric analysis of electricity price formation...

This study analyses the job-broking function of the Finnish Public Employment Service (PES). The empirical analysis is based on the Finnish job vacancy microdata in 2002 and 2003 including information on over 320,000 job vacancies each year. The open job vacancy period, the recruitment duration...