Browsing by study line "Research track"
Now showing items 41-44 of 44
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(2023)The gender wage gap is still prevalent despite increases in female educational attainment and employment rates in many countries. Recent research has studied how much of the gender wage gap is due to firm pay policies by estimating the difference in firm pay premiums that men and women receive from their employers. This is called the firm effects gap. This gap can be further decomposed into bargaining and sorting effects which measure how much of this gap in pay premiums is due to women receiving lower pay premiums than men working in the same firm (bargaining) and how much is due to women working in low-paying firms (sorting). The first part of this thesis goes over this recent literature, and based on research from different countries, it is evident that firm pay policies have a non-negligible effect on the gender wage gap. The empirical part of this thesis uses Finnish data from organized firms, which are covered by collective agreements, over the period 2012-2021 and estimates the firm effects gap and its components in the overall sample and in various subgroups. Compared to other studies, the effect of firm pay policies on the gender wage gap is moderate in the overall sample: according to highest (lowest) estimate they explain 24.9% (4.9%) of the overall gender wage gap. Gender wage gaps increase over the life cycle, but this cannot be explained by firm pay policies as the firm effects gap and its components stay roughly at the same level across age groups. Firm effects gaps are smaller among people with a higher education degree and in larger firms, but differences are small. While gender wage gaps are larger for high earners, firm effects gaps are smaller in upper wage deciles. Although collective agreements are a prevalent feature of Finnish labor markets, not all firms are covered by them. Also, the sample is restricted to organized firms, which are not the only firms covered by collective agreements due to general applicability, and many small firms are excluded. Therefore, it is unclear whether these results can be generalized to the whole private sector in Finland.
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(2021)The electricity sector plays a central role in climate change mitigation and adaptation policies. At the same time, it is also affected by the climate. The ongoing clean energy transition has made the link between electricity sector and weather even stronger since the increasing intermittent renewable energy production is increasingly weather dependent and cannot respond to abrupt changes in demand. Therefore, understanding how the electricity demand reacts to the changes in the climate is crucial for designing policies that support sustainable transition to the net zero economy. The thesis sheds light on these challenges and studies the effects of temperature on the intra-day electricity load in four European countries, Finland, Germany, France and Spain. The research questions are how temperature affects the hourly electricity consumption and whether these effects are different at different hours of the day. The sample consists of data on aggregate hourly electricity load and hourly population weighted temperatures over a period of over 10 years. The hour-specific effects of temperature on electricity load are estimated with a linear regression model of high-frequency fixed effects that allows credible identification of the short-run effects. However, the approach can not address the role of changing behavioural, economic or technological factors which are left for future work. The effects are estimated for each country separately, which also allows to capture the heterogeneity between countries. The results confirm the finding in the previous literature of the non-linear relationship between temperature and electricity load. In particular, electricity load is estimated to be more sensitive to temperature at the extreme temperatures and a comfort zone at which the electricity consumption is estimated to be insensitive to changes in temperatures is found for all countries. However, in Finland and France, the temperature effects are more pronounced at the cold temperatures, whereas in Germany and Spain, the effects are more symmetric. Moreover, in France, Germany and Spain, a comfort zone is estimated to be at colder temperatures in the morning and to shift to warmer temperatures in the afternoon. This implies that, at temperatures approximately between 10℃ and 20℃, heating is more sensitive to changes in temperature at the afternoon hours whereas cooling is more sensitive to changes in temperature at the early morning hours in the three countries. In Finland, the effects of temperature are relatively constant between hours. In conclusion, the results imply that temperatures contribute to the changing dynamics in the electricity sector, affecting both the intra-day variability and the level of the electricity consumption. However, the role of temperatures in these dynamics is relatively moderate.
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(2024)Tax incidence is a measure for the burden of taxation on the seller and the buyer. Recently there have been empirical evidence of asymmetries in pass-through that are not consistent with the basic theory of tax incidence. The two $CO_2$ based car registration tax reforms of 2008 and 2012 in Finland allow for contributing to the previous literature by studying potential asymmetries in pass-through because the 2008 reform was mostly a tax cut and the 2012 reform was mostly an tax increase. My data consists of full sample of tax forms for all imported cars between 2001 and 2018 complemented by full registry data for all the cars in use between 2001 and 2018 in Finland. I find almost full pass-through of the taxes by using fixed effects regression and differences-in-differences as two complementary identification strategies with different critical assumptions. There might exist some spillover effects and therefore my preferred strategy is the more simple fixed effects regression with pass-through estimate of 89\% for the tax cut of 2008 and 95\% for the tax increase of 2012. Overall my point estimates for the 2008 reform are smaller than for the 2012 reform but this difference is not highly significant statistically. I contribute to the existing literature by being the first one to estimate the tax incidence of car registration tax reforms in Finland.
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(2020)Tutkielmassa arvioidaan, miten työttömyysturvan enimmäiskeston rajaaminen vuonna 2014 on vaikuttanut työttömyyden pituuteen. Enimmäisaikaa lyhennettiin tuolloin 100 päivällä niiltä työttömiltä, joilla on alle 3 vuoden työhistoria. Tutkimuksen aineistona on käytetty henkilötason rekisteriaineistoja työttömyysetuuksista ja ansaintajaksoista. Toimenpiteen vaikutusta arvioidaan vertaamalla, miten ero lyhyen ja pitkän työhistorian henkilöiden työttömyysjaksoissa muuttuu vuonna 2014. Erotukset erotuksissa -asetelmassa ei tunnisteta tilastollisesti merkitseviä vaikutuksia jaksojen pituudessa. Lyhyen työhistorian työttömien havaitut keskimääräiset työttömyysjaksot pitenivät selvästi sekä verrattuna edelliseen vuoteen että suhteessa pidemmän työhistorian työttömiin. Käytettyä tutkimusasetelmaa rasittavat muut samanaikaiset muutokset työttömyysturvassa, suhdannevaihtelun mahdollisesti erilaiset vaikutukset ryhmiin sekä luokitteluun liittyvä mittausvirhe. Kokonaisuutena arvioiden tutkimusasetelman oletuksia ja siten asetelman luotettavuutta kohtaan jää vakava epäily. Lisätarkasteluna tutkielmassa esitetään ennen–jälkeen -arvio siitä, miten työttömyys on muuttunut vuonna 2017. Tuolloin työttömyysturvan enimmäiskestoa lyhennettiin kaikilta 100 päivällä. Tässä tarkastelussa havaitaan, että työttömyysjaksot ovat lyhentyneet merkittävästi useissa kohdin työttömyyden aikaprofiilia. Keskimäärin jaksojen pituus on vähentynyt jopa yli 20 etuuspäivällä tai 20 prosentilla. Muutos on suunnaltaan sopusoinnussa aiemman tutkimuskirjallisuuden kanssa. Enimmäiskeston rajauksen mahdollista vaikutusta ei tässä tapauksessa voida kuitenkaan luotettavasti erottaa muista työttömyyden pituuteen vaikuttavista tekijöistä.
Now showing items 41-44 of 44