This paper studies the evolution of early retirement due to disease and injury in the German labor force between 1988 and 2004. Using data from the German Federation of Public Pension Providers, the IMS Health Drug Launches database and the WHO Mortality Database, we show that new drug launches...

We reconsider the effects of long-run economic growth on relative factor prices across cones of specialization. We model economic growth as exogenous technical change. Allowing for capital biased technical change with a sector bias and for endogenous commodity prices, we find that economic...

This study investigates the role of stratification of health and income in the social cost of healthrelated early retirement, as evidenced in the German Socio-economic Panel (GSOEP). We interpret early retirement as a mechanism to limit work-related declines in health that allows poorer and less...

Analyses in this paper do not support the idea that job and worker flows have become more intensive and have deteriorated working conditions in the Finnish business sector. The magnitude of flow has in fact been rather stable since 1997. However, job flows are at a quite high level, as some 10%...

Most existing empirical work on technology diffusion assumes technologies to remain constant throughout the diffusion process. However, many consumer technologies improve significantly over time. Using data on the characteristics of new mobile handsets over a ten-year period and controlling for...

This study analyzes trends in specialization of the Finnish industry since the 1980s. Low technology industries, such as pulp and paper, have had traditionally a large proportion of the Finnish industrial output. During the recent decades their share of output has decreased significantly and...

This paper aims to establish how the innovative activity in Finland has changed over time in the transition from a resource-driven economy to a knowledge-driven economy. The paper first takes a historical perspective on innovation and industrial activity in Finland through a descriptive...

General purpose technologies (GPT) have a significant impact on economic activity through radical technological change and wide technological diffusion. This paper aims to address the generality of technologies associated with the GPT concept. Information and communications technologies (ICT),...

This paper develops a simple analytical framework in which optimal health and retirement policies amid population aging can be discussed. To be efficient, these policies must recognize and exploit the dynamic complementarities between the timing of retirement, the size of lifecycle labour income...

The paper analyzes the contemporary organizational restructuring of production and work within firms. We emphasize the shift from a "Tayloristic" organization of work (characterized by significant specialization by tasks) to a "holistic" organization (featuring job rotation, integration of tasks...