We analyse free-riding behaviour of Finnish municipalities prior to voluntary municipal mergers. The merger process creates a temporary common pool problem, because of a delay from the initial decision to the actual merger during which municipalities stay autonomous. Using a...

We study whether the mechanism design in the central bank liquidity auctions matters for the interbank money market interest rate levels and volatility. Furthermore, we compare different mechanisms to sell liquidity in terms of revenue, efficiency and auction stage interest rate levels and...

We analyze whether voters value local political representation by exploiting municipal mergers, which increase the number of candidates available to voters and intensify political competition. In the Finnish open-list proportional representation system, voters rank the candidates within parties,...

What effect does using open (as opposed to closed) lists in proportional representation elections have on party performance and the quality of candidate selection? We provide novel evidence by studying local elections in Colombia, where parties have discretion to field either open or closed...

We exploit a regression discontinuity design to provide causal evidence of the relative age effect (RAE) on a long-run adult age outcome: Political selection. We find strong evidence of the RAE in politics in Finland. However, the effect is heterogeneous: We find that male candidates born early...

We provide novel stylized facts about competition, bidding, entry and bidders across a wide spectrum of public procurement auctions using comprehensive and rich Finnish data. Competition for publicly procured contracts is relatively low with a median bidder count of two (three conditional on...