We use lifetime job histories from the pension records to evaluate changes in job stability in Finland between 1963 and 2004. We specify a duration model and estimate the effects of elapsed duration, age, and calendar time on the hazard of job ending using individual-level panel data spanning...

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...

Literature on early retirement has generally ignored firms' role in the labour market withdrawals. Yet, as it is shown in this paper, employee incentives alone cannot explain the increase in unemployment at the end of the career. Instead, we construct an implicit contracts model where we account...

In this paper we evaluate the effects of a regional experiment that reduced payroll taxes by 3-6 percentage points in Northern Finland for three years. We match each firm in the target region with a similar firm in the control region and estimate the effect of the payroll-tax reduction by...

In this study we analyse the effects of the changes in the school spending on the matriculation examination results. We use a large sample of Finnish senior secondary school students from the years 1990-1998. Teaching expenditure did not have a significant effect on the average test scores....

We compare various matching estimators to the results of two randomized field experiments that evaluate employment effects of job search training programs. We find that commonly used non-experimental matching estimators tend to over-estimate the program effects and that the bias differs between...

The Finnish comprehensive school reform replaced the old two-track school system with a uniform nine-year comprehensive school and significantly reduced the degree of heterogeneity in the Finnish primary and secondary education. We estimate the effect of this reform on the test scores in the...

Existing evidence of inequality aversion relies on data from class-room experiments where subjects face hypothetical questions. This paper estimates the magnitude of inequality aversion using representative survey data, with questions related to the real-economy situations the respondents face....

Low-wage subsidies are often proposed as a solution to the unemployment problem among the low skilled. Yet the empirical evidence on the effects of low-wage subsidies is surprisingly scarce. This paper examines the employment effects of a Finnish payroll tax subsidy scheme, which is targeted at...

Low-wage subsidies are often proposed as a solution to the unemployment problem among the low skilled. Yet the empirical evidence on the effects of low-wage subsidies is surprisingly scarce. This paper examines the employment effects of a Finnish payroll tax subsidy scheme, which is targeted at...