There are over 3 billion searches globally on Google every day. This report examines whether Google search queries can be used to predict the present and the near future unemployment rate in Finland. Predicting the present and the near future is of interest, as the official records of the state...

The share of private consumption in gross domestic product is significant; therefore, private consumption has a great influence on economic growth, which makes it a major concept in economics. The purpose of the paper is to estimate and evaluate different forecasting models for private...

This report examines whether Google search queries can be used to predict the present and the near future house prices in Finland. Compared to a simple benchmark model, Google searches improve the prediction of the present house price index by 7.5 % measured by mean absolute error. In addition,...

This study evaluates the long-run effects of Finnish active labour market programmes in youth labour markets. The effectiveness of programmes is measured by a number of outcomes, including employment, unemployment, programme participation, education, being out of the labour force and annual...

This paper discusses the Finnish experiences of Active Labour Market Policy (ALMP) across the economic cycle, especially in economic downturn. Cuts in unemployment spell duration have been the main factors to contribute in decreasing the unemployment in the recent years. Subsidised employment...