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The opportunity costs of defence and the impact of defence spending on economic growth aroused the interest of researchers during the Cold War. The question is topical again, as the war in Ukraine has accelerated international armaments and increased investments in defence. For Finland and Sweden, the issue is also important in terms of future NATO membership, because NATO recommends that its member countries spend at least 2% of GDP on defence. Achieving the limit requires an increase in defence spending from both countries. No case studies on the impact of defence spending on economic growth have been published about Finland and Sweden, but the countries have been discussed as part of broader panel materials. This thesis fills the gap. The thesis applies structural vector autoregressive methods to analyse the period from 1960 to 2021. Granger causality is included in the analysis, because–despite its problematic nature–the concept has a central position in the history of the research topic. Previous literature has considered the identification of a structural model challenging because the determination of bidirectional causality would require a suitable exogenous variable, which is almost impossible to find in this context. The view is challenged by suggesting that a partial identification can be accepted when the interest is focused only on the defence spending shock. The alternative analysis concerning a shorter time period tests the sensitivity of results to a time period. The impulse response analysis suggests that the impact of defence spending on GDP is slightly positive for both countries, but statistically significant only for Sweden. Granger causality is not observed in either direction for either country. Finland's neutral result is in line with expectations and previous literature, but Sweden's positive result is contrary to expectations. The alternative analysis concerning the post-Cold War era confirms that the Finnish result is robust regardless of the time period. The inconsistency with previous literature and the challenges caused by conditional heteroskedasticity raise doubts about the reliability of the Swedish result. The thesis indicates that increases in defence spending will not harm economic growth in Finland and Sweden. The result is surprising, as it has been suggested that previous studies have underestimated the negative impact of defence spending and most of the recent literature supports a negative or neutral impact. Further research is needed, especially on the impact mechanisms and the causes of heterogeneity. Decomposing defence spending could provide answers to unresolved questions.

Prices of different products are followed by statistical offices in order to produce price indices. The quality of products is constantly changing due to creative destruction. When a product leaves market, its price is computed with a method called imputation. Recent studies in United States and France have found that use of imputation may lead to upward bias in inflation. Since price indices are used as deflators when calculating economic growth, such a bias would mean that some of the growth is missed. The aim of this thesis is to study whether such a bias exists in Finland and how large it is. In addition, the channels of innovation induced growth are studied in order to determine from where the potentially missed growth originates. Creative destruction has been incorporated into economic growth models in the early 1990s. In its centre, are firms at the microlevel that innovate and create new products and improve existing ones. It has been shown that it is a key element when economic growth is concerned. New products and improving quality of old varieties is, however, widely recognised problem for price indices. Sources of bias for price statistics has been studied a lot and the changing quality of products is one of the greatest of them. This thesis contributes to this field by recognising a new possible source of bias and its magnitude in Finnish economy. The model used in this thesis is from 2017 paper by Aghion, Bergeaud, Boppart, Klenow and Li. The model is a new keynesian DSGE model with exogenous innovation and it provides an accounting framework which enables the quantification of missing growth. The missing growth is estimated using a so-called market share approach, where market shares of incumbent and entrant producers are exploited to quantify the share of growth that is missed yearly. Another method, namely indirect inference, relies on simulation of the economic growth model. It infers the arrival rates and step sizes of different types of innovations: incumbent of innovation, creative destruction and new product varieties. The simulation also enables for finding the contributions of those innovation types for the economic growth. The contributions provide information on from which type of innovation the majority of growth comes. Both methods use data provided by Statistics Finland. They use micro level data on private enterprises in Finland during the years 1989 – 2016. The market share approach requires establishment level data and information on the revenue and employment. The indirect inference method uses the same data aggregated on firm level for the years 1993 – 2013. In addition, the simulation requires total factor productivity growth rate for the given years. The results suggest that 0.489 percentage points of growth has been missed yearly in Finland during the years 1989 – 2016 when calculated with revenue data. The missed growth was estimated to be 0.532 percentage points per year with employment data. The results are comparable in magnitude with the results from the United States and France. The magnitude has remained stable over the years. The indirect inference method suggests that most of the growth comes from incumbent own innovation: 59.3% in 1993 – 2003 and 57.8% in 2003 – 2013. The rest is due to creative destruction and new product varieties either by incumbents or entrants. If 0.5 percentage points of growth is missed every year, it would have had significant effects on the economy. For example, many social benefits are tied to price indices and over estimation of them would mean that the benefits have not risen as much as they should have. Given the systematic nature of the bias, the central bank should consider increasing its inflation target. The statistical offices that produce the price statistics may be able to lower the bias if they manage to keep up to date with incumbent own innovations, since the majority of growth is originating from it. Also chain linked index helps lowering the bias by updating the sample and weights on a yearly basis. Additional research is needed in order to find solutions to overcome the bias caused by creative destruction and imputation of missing prices.

Finnish economy performed remarkably well for decades after the war. Finland achieved an enviable standard of living with a combination of free-market capitalism and extensive welfare state. The long period of growth, which was temporarily disrupted by the 1990s depression, culminated in the spectacular rise of Nokia that pushed the entire country forward. Eventually the period of growth ended in global financial crisis of 2007-2008. While Finland’s neighbors were able to bounce back in few years, it took a decade for Finland to recover, and the effects of the prolonged recovery are felt yet today. This dissertation focusses on identifying the underlying reasons to Finland’s poor performance in recent years. The research question in this dissertation is broad: to identify significant trends and phenomena that cross sector boundaries and cannot be described by a single model and a narrow approach. The approach is to systematically review well established theories, sector by sector, and then present cross-country evidence to shed light on Finland’s economy. A lot of emphasize is on Schumpeterian endogenous growth theory, which explains why firms invest in research and development. Schumpeterian theory is tested with a panel data regression, using sector-level Product Market Competition data and data on triadic patent presentations. Data used in this dissertation is collected from public sources, including Statistics Finland, Eurostat, OECD, UN, ILO, WIPO and The World Bank. A Statistically significant and positive relationship between PMC and rate of innovation was found to exist using Finnish data for 2013 and 2017. As PMC has declined in key industries in Finland, it means that firms’ incentives to innovate have decreased. This coincides with austerity measures that have impacted public sector R&D spending. These factors, among with others, have contributed to Total Factor Productivity decline, which is worrisome. Other notable findings include Finland’s post-crisis growth in private demand, that substantially contributed to Finland’s recovery. However, much of that growth comes from spending on housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels, that is related to steep increase in electricity transmission tariffs. In other words, increased spending reduced welfare. As overall conclusion, Finland needs a more strategic approach to economic policy. Finland would benefit from focusing on policies that spur innovation and generate growth, namely, stronger focus on market economy and R&D. Deregulation, supporting the market economy, and lowering the obstacles that stand in the way of immigration of skilled workers, are examples of those policies.