Browsing by study line "Research track"
Now showing items 21-38 of 38
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(2019)Hintavakauden saavuttamisesta on tullut keskuspankkien tärkeimpiä tehtäviä kaikkialla maailmassa, ja useat keskuspankit pyrkivät tiettyyn, hyvin määriteltyyn inflaatiotavoitteeseen. Samoin Euroopan keskuspankki pyrkii rahapolitiikallaan pitämään inflaation kahden prosentin tuntumassa. Inflaatiotavoite kuitenkin vaatii sen, että inflaatiota voidaan ennustaa mahdollisimman tarkasti. Koneoppimismetodeihin kuuluvat neuroverkkomallit ovat osoittautuneet olemaan monilla aloilla hyviä ennustemalleja. Inflaation ennustamisessa neuroverkkomallien tulokset ovat kuitenkin olleet ristiriitaisia. Aiempi tutkimus inflaation ennustamisesta on myös keskittynyt lähinnä Yhdysvaltojen ja muiden yksittäisten maiden inflaatioon. Tutkimusta ei ole myöskään tehty inflaation ennustamisesta eri suhdannetilanteissa neuroverkkomallien avulla. Tässä tutkielmassa tutkittiinkin neuroverkkomallin kykyä ennustaa inflaatiota koko euroalueella vuosien 2008-2009 taantuman aikana. Tutkielman aineistona käytettiin euroalueen harmonisoidusta kuluttajahintaindeksistä muodostettua inflaatioaikasarjaa vuosilta 1997-2010. Tutkielmassa epälineaarinen neuroverkko rakennettiin aiemmasta kirjallisuudesta vakiintuneella metodilla, jossa mallin valinta suoritettiin käyttämällä erillistä aineistoa. Valitulla mallilla simuloitiin aitoa ennustetilannetta käyttämällä euroalueen taantuman aikaista testiaineistoa. Ennusteet tehtiin myös taantuman jälkeiselle noususuhdanteelle, jotta eri suhdannetilanteita voitiin vertailla. Lisäksi samat ennusteet tehtiin ekonometriassa vakiintuneella lineaarisella mallilla, johon neuroverkkomallia verrattiin käyttämällä aiemmasta kirjallisuudesta tuttuja arviointikriteerejä ja tilastollisia testejä. Tutkielmassa selvisi, että neuroverkkomalli tuottaa hyvin tarkkoja ennusteita inflaatiolle kaikilla tutkielmassa käytetyillä ennusteväleillä. Neuroverkkomallin ennusteet ovat myös parempia, jos käytettävä aineisto on kausitasoitettu. Neuroverkkomalli tekee pienempiä ennustevirheitä noususuhdanteen aikana kuin taantumassa, mutta erot eri suhdannetilanteissa eivät ole kovin suuria. Neuroverkkomallin ennusteet eivät kuitenkaan poikkea yksinkertaisen lineaarisen mallin tekemistä ennusteista tilastollisesti merkitsevästi kummassakaan suhdannetilanteessa. Näin ollen neuroverkkomallin ei voida päätellä toimivan eri tavalla taloudellisessa taantumassa kuin muissa suhdannetilanteissa. Tutkielman tulosten perusteella neuroverkkomallia ei voida suositella keskuspankkien inflaatioennustemalliksi, koska mallin valinta ja testaaminen vievät yksinkertaista lineaarista mallia enemmän aikaa, mutta ennustetulokset eivät ole lineaarista mallia parempia. Tulokset antavatkin todisteita siitä, että inflaatio on euroalueella lineaarinen prosessi, jolloin epälineaariset mallit eivät tuota ennusteisiin lisähyötyä. Neuroverkkomallit voivat kuitenkin antaa hyvän työkalun keskuspankkien toiminnan arvioimiseen, koska niiden tuottamat ennusteet ovat tarkkoja pitemmillekin aikaväleille.
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(2022)The LHC particle accelerator at CERN probes the elementary building blocks of matter by colliding protons at a center-of-mass energy of √s = 13 TeV. Collimated sprays of particles arise when quarks and gluons are produced at high energies, that are reconstructed from measured data and clustered together into jets. Accurate measurements of the energy of jets are paramount for sensitive particle physics analyses at the CMS experiment. Jet energy corrections are for that reason used to map measurements towards Monte Carlo simulated truth values, which are independent of detector response. The aim of this thesis is to improve upon the standard jet energy corrections by utilizing deep learning. Recent advancements on learning from point clouds in the machine learning community have been adopted in particle physics studies to improve jet flavor classification accuracy. This includes representing jet constituents as an unordered set, or a so-called “particle cloud”. Two highly performant models suitable for such data are the set-based Particle Flow Network and the graph-based ParticleNet. A natural next step in the advancement of jet energy corrections is to adopt a similar methodology, only changing the problem statement from classification to regression. The deep learning models developed in this work provide energy corrections that are generically applicable to differently flavored jets. Their performance is presented in the form of jet energy response resolution and reduction in flavor dependence. The models achieve state of the art performance for both metrics, significantly surpassing the standard corrections benchmark.
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(2022)Tonttien tilastollisilla hinta-arvioilla on käyttöä arvostuspohjaisen hintaindeksin rakentamisessa sekä suurien tonttikauppojen hintojen jaottelemisessa kohteilleen. Tämä tutkimus laajentaa aikaisempaa tutkimusta asuintonttien hinnoista tutkimalla liike- ja toimistotonttien hintoja. Tutkimuksessa selvitetään, poikkeaako toimitilatonttien hinnat asuintonttien hinnoista. Lisäksi selvitetään mallien hinta-arvioiden tarkkuutta tonttien hintojen mallintamisessa. Tutkimus toteutetaan Maamittauslaitoksen kauppahintarekisterillä, joka sisältää tietoja Suomessa tehdyistä kiinteistö- ja tonttikaupoista. Tutkimuksessa tuodaan esille rekisteriaineiston rajauksessa käytetyt ehdot sekä aineiston tietojen täydentämiseen käytetyt aineistot ja menetelmät. Tutkimuksessa esitellään yksityiskohtaisesti tonttien hinta-arvioiden laskemiseen käytettävät mallit. Tonttien hintoja mallinnetaan lineaarisella mallilla sekä koneoppimismetodilla tehostetulla regressiopuu-mallilla. Malleissa käytetyt selittävät muuttujat on valittu rekisteriaineistosta aikaisempaa tutkimusta apuna käyttäen. Rekisteriaineiston pohjalta on mahdollista koota useita tekijöitä, joilla voidaan arvioida tontin neliöhintaa. Mallien pohjalta ei voida kuitenkaan yksiselitteisesti sanoa, että liike- ja toimistotontit olisivat lähtökohtaisesti arvokkaampia kuin asuintontit. Poikkeavien tonttikauppojen poistamisen jälkeen koneoppimismetodilla tehostetulla regressiopuu-mallilla voidaan arvioida asuintonttien hintoja 15 prosentin tarkkuudella noin kolmannekselle tonteista. Liike- ja toimistotonteille vastaava tarkkuus saadaan noin kuudennekselle toimitilatonteista. Tutkimuksen tuloksena suositellaan, että tonttien hintoja mallinnetaan koneoppismetodein tehostetuilla regressiopuilla lineaarisen mallin sijasta. Mallin hinta-arvioiden tarkkuuden parantamiseksi suositellaan aineiston kasvattamista aikaväliä laajentamalla ja erityisesti liike- ja toimistotonttien määrän lisäämistä tutkimusaineistoon. Lisäksi suositellaan maapohjan laatutekijöiden tarkempaa tutkimista tutkimusaineiston tonteille.
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(2023)To comprehensively study economic inequality and its development, Distributional National Accounts (DINA) base its inequality measures on the national income as a whole. Focusing on the national accounts part of the project, I follow DINA’s recommendations on modifying the concept of national income to cover some of the aspects it currently excludes. The three proposed modifications account for natural resource depletion, income from tax havens, and reinvested earnings on foreign portfolio investment. In this thesis, I apply all three modifications to the Finnish national income 1975–2022. To estimate the first, novel modification on the depreciation of natural capital, I combine a variety of data sources and methodologies on depletion of timber and minerals. The two modifications to foreign income flows have already been estimated by DINA, and my contribution lies in analyzing the results in the Finnish context. Although depletion of natural resources has gained wide attention, my thesis thus provides the first example where depletion of natural resources has been studied aside the two other modifications. I find that the modifications change national income by between 0.8 and - 5.8 % each year, the effect being largest at the beginning of the 21st century. Moreover, the modifications change the rate of growth in national income by approximately two percentage points each year 1998–2003. The results imply that the way natural resources and foreign income flows are recorded can significantly affect the level of national income and that the effect is not unequivocally negative.
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(2022)This thesis studies the effects of delayed discharge fees in Finland. Excessive lengths of hospital stays are a significant source of inefficacy in the health care system. Delayed discharge occurs when a patient who is medically fit to leave the hospital cannot do so for non-medical reasons. In Finland, several hospital districts have implemented financial fees to curb delayed discharges. As the fees were not adopted simultaneously everywhere, it provides a desirable research setting. I use a staggered difference-in-difference design to study how the delayed discharge fees reduce the length of hospital stays and the probability of urgent hospital readmission using patient-level data. I presume that the fees work as an incentive to increase the supply of post-acute care beds. Hence, the implementation of delayed discharge fees would lead to fewer delays and consequently shorter hospital days and early access to post-acute care. Previous literature suggests that there exists an inverse correlation between delayed discharges and the availability of post-acute care beds. In addition, there is evidence that health care providers react to financial incentives. However, the existing literature documents contradicting results on the effects of the delayed discharge fees. The chosen identification strategy does not yield valid results when using the length of stay as a dependent variable. My results suggest that the parallel trends assumption does not hold. The pre-treatment trends persist even after controlling for group-specific variables. I find that the delayed discharge fees reduce the probability of readmission for elderly hip-fracture patients. The effect is modest in size but increases over time. After six years from the implementation, the effect of the fees is -0.059 per cent. The classical two-period difference-in-difference model concludes that the decrease in probability associated with the delayed discharge fees is - 0.018 per cent. Although significant, the reduction in probability is small. Hence strong conclusions should be avoided. My results suggest that delayed discharge fees could have positive implications on patients’ health but that their effects be further studied.
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(2024)Value added taxes (VAT) are a central tool for collecting consumption taxes in Finland and worldwide. Still, VAT system has its shortcomings. Dishonest companies can exploit the system to evade taxes or apply for unjust tax deductions. This thesis investigates the effectiveness of an augmented VAT mechanism, reverse charge, on value added tax compliance. Reverse charge mechanism transfers the liability for remitting VAT in business-to-business transactions to the purchaser, instead of the seller. In this thesis, I conduct theoretical and empirical analysis of reverse charge. First, I employ a tax evasion model to predict how firms change their behavior when reverse charge policy is adopted. Then, I examine how VAT reverse charge affects firms' reporting behavior using administrative data on Finnish firms' VAT returns. Reverse charge policy was adopted in the Finnish construction industry in 2011. I compare the outcomes of construction firms to similar companies, with a Differences-in-Differences design, to capture the effect of the policy on VAT compliance. The findings indicate a 3.87% increase in reported tax liabilities by construction firms once the policy is adopted, suggesting enhanced tax compliance. Sensitivity analysis shows that the results hold under moderate violations of the parallel trends assumption. This thesis contributes to the existing economic literature by showing novel evidence on the firm level effects of reverse charge. I also illustrate another market structure where tax revenue can be increased by changing who remits taxes to the government.
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(2022)This thesis investigates the within-school segregation of Finnish students using survey data on friendships. The difference in academic performance between students with and without immigrant backgrounds is large, and in order to make it smaller, the study environment for students with immigrant backgrounds must be understood. Identifying the extent to which students with immigrant background experience a different social environment is one step in that direction. Individual segregation is the extent to which the social network of an individual is composed of individuals similar to each other regarding some specific trait. This study investigates the existence of individual segregation in Finnish schools using information on who the fifth grade students participating in the study are friends with. The individual segregation level is calculated based on the background of friends, dividing students into two groups: students with or without immigrant backgrounds. This gives an indication of the possible segregation at an individual level, created through friend choice. Additionally, the correlation between individual level segregation and age at arrival to Finland and academic skills respectively is studied. Clear evidence of individual level segregation among immigrants is found. Students with immigrant backgrounds are more likely to have friends with immigrant backgrounds and more likely to be lonely, as in have no friends. However, neither correlation between in- dividual segregation and age at arrival nor correlation between individual segregation and academic skills can be found. This could be explained by problems with the data, but can also indicate that peer effects in class are smaller than what was expected based on previous research. It seems that also segregation patterns differ from what has been found in similar American studies. More research need to be done, but this thesis shows that students with immigrant backgrounds experience a different social environment when it comes to friends than students with non-immigrant backgrounds do, as the share of friends with im- migrant backgrounds is significantly higher for students who themselves have immigrant backgrounds.
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(2024)I utvecklade länder har globalisering, teknologiska framsteg och diversifiering inom industrisektorn minskat efterfrågan på lågkvalificerad arbetskraft. Detta har resulterat i en ökad specialisering mot kunskapsintensiva och högproduktiva arbetsuppgifter, vilket har haft negativa konsekvenser för lågutbildade arbetstagare. I respons till arbetsmarknadens ökade efterfrågan på högkvalificerade arbetstagare, genomfördes skolreformer under 1900-talet, som förlängde den obligatoriska utbildningen, i de flesta utvecklade länder. Denna avhandling undersöker effekten av skolgång på arbetsmarknadsrelevanta kognitiva färdigheter och arbetsmarknadsutfall genom att utnyttja exogen variation i utbildningsnivåer, som genererats av dessa skolreformer, med data från PIAAC-undersökningen. Genom att använda den kontinuitetsbaserade lokala polynomiska regression discontinuity metoden (RDD) utforskas effekterna av obligatoriska skolreformer på testresultat i läsförståelse och räknefärdigheter, logaritmerade timlöner samt sannolikheten för sysselsättning för ett kombinerat urval som består av Belgien, Danmark, Frankrike, Grekland, Irland och Spanien. Därutöver kontrolleras för heterogeniteten i behandlingseffekterna genom att härleda landspecifika behandlingseffekter för att korrekt återspegla de varierande påverkningarna av skolreformerna mellan länderna. En signifikant inverkan av att vara föremål för en obligatorisk skolreform på antalet avlagda skolår identifieras enbart för Belgien. För Belgien varierar effekten från det första steget för antalet avlagda skolår mellan 1,466 och 2,545 år beroende på polynomjusteringen och den tillämpade bandbredden. Dessutom identifieras en signifikant inverkan av behandlingstilldelningen på kognitiva färdigheter uteslutande för Belgien. Intentionto-treat-effekten (ITT) av att vara föremål för den obligatoriska skolreformen på testresultat i läsförståelse är 0,332 standardavvikelser för justeringar av polynom av första graden och 0,529 standardavvikelser för justeringar av polynom av andra graden. De uppskattade lokala genomsnittliga behandlingseffekterna (LATE) av behandlingstilldelningen på testresultat i läsförståelse är lägre, med värden på 0,238 respektive 0,189 standardavvikelser för individer som mottog behandlingen. Sammantaget tyder konvergerande genomsnittliga koefficienter på att den positiva korrelationen mellan utbildning och testresultat i läsförståelse nästan uteslutande beror på ett kausalt förhållande mellan dem. Inga diskontinuiteter observeras för testresultat i räknefärdigheter omkring gränsvärdet för det sammanslagna urvalet eller för något enskilt land. För sannolikheten att vara sysselsatt är samtliga punktskattningar för ITT-effekterna för de enskilda länderna positiva men statistiskt insignifikanta. Trots detta observeras signifikanta genomsnittliga viktade ITT-effekter av behandlingstilldelningen på sannolikheten för sysselsättning för det kombinerade urvalet. För justeringar av polynom av första graden ökar sannolikheten för sysselsättning med 7,77 och 9,64 procentenheter för det råa respektive kollapsade urvalet enligt medelvärdena för de viktade uppskattningarna. Motsvarande uppskattningar uppgår till 12,90 och 14 procentenheter för justeringar av polynom av andra graden. En samlad bedömning av resultaten från robusthetsanalysen tillhandahåller dock inte stöd för förekomsten av en signaleringseffekt av att vara föremål för en utbildningsreform. Resultaten är känsliga för valet av bandbredd. Resultaten från avhandlingen överensstämmer med befintlig litteratur, som generellt sett har rapporterat positiva eller obetydliga effekter av utbildning på kognitiva färdigheter och arbetsmarknadsutfall. Studien bidrar till den befintliga forskningen om utbildningens inverkan på arbetsmarknadsrelevanta färdigheter och arbetsmarknadsutfall genom att analysera samlade behandlingseffekter över sex europeiska länder, vilket står i kontrast till tidigare studier som har fokuserat på landspecifika effekter. Därutöver utvidgar studien förståelsen för sambandet mellan utbildning, färdigheter och arbetsmarknadsutfall genom att fokusera på heterogeniteten i behandlingseffekterna mellan enskilda utvecklade länder.
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(2023)Milloin julkaista tuoteuutuus? Julkaisun ajoittaminen on erityisen tärkeää kulttuurihyödykkeiden markkinoilla, joilla kysyntä on usein kausittaista ja nopeasti vähenevää. Tällaisilla markkinoilla toimivat yritykset haluaisivat julkaista tuotteensa kysynnän ollessa suurin, mutta myös kilpailijat tavoittelevat kausittaisia kysyntähuippuja, ja lisäksi nykyisten tilaajien kärsivällisyys on rajallinen, joten he saattavat perua tilauksensa mikäli joutuvat odottamaan uusia julkaisuja liian kauan. Yritykset joutuvat siis tasapainottelemaan kilpailullisen paineen ja nykyisten asiakkaiden poistuman välillä tehdessään investointi- ja julkaisupäätöksiään. Tässä tutkielmassa tarkastellaan strategista investointia ja julkaisun ajoittamista tilauspohjaisten palveluiden kontekstissa. Aikaisempi taloustieteen ja markkinoinnin kirjallisuus on tutkinut kulttuurihyödykkeiden investointipäätöksiä ja julkaisun ajoittamista lähinnä elokuvien teatterilevityksen kontekstissa. Suoratoiston nopeasta yleistymisestä huolimatta suoratoistopalveluiden julkaisupäätöksiä tutkivaa teoreettista tai empiiristä kirjallisuutta ei ole. Tämä tutkielma laajentaa tätä kirjallisuutta kehittämällä yksinkertaisen peliteoreettisen mallin, joka formalisoi kulttuurihyödykkeiden markkinoille tyypillisen kausittaisen ja nopeasti vähenevän kysynnän, ja endogenisoi asiakaspoistuman. Mallin tasapainot osoittavat, että ajoituspäätökset riippuvat olennaisesti nykyisten asiakkaiden määrän suhteesta kausittaiseen kysyntään: tämän suhdeluvun ollessa korkea, yritykset asettavat asiakaspoistuman minimoinnin kausittaisesta kysynnästä kilpailemisen edelle ja viivyttävät julkaisuja. Lisäksi investoinnit tuotteiden laatuun ovat matalampia viivästetyssä tasapainossa. Teoreettisesta mallista johdettuja hypoteeseja testataan empiirisesti käyttäen aineistoa suoratoistopalveluiden markkinalta Yhdysvalloista. Empiiriset tulokset vahvistavat osan hypoteeseista melko vahvasti: TV-sarjat ovat tärkeä strateginen väline suoratoistopalveluille, ja teoreettisen mallin havainnot asiakaspoistumasta osuvat yhteen havaitun viikoittaisten julkaisujen syklisyyden kanssa. Lisäksi empiiriset tulokset implikoivat sekä kilpailullisen paineen että omien samanaikaisesti julkaistujen ohjelmien olevan yhteydessä julkaisuun lähempänä kysyntäpiikkejä, joskin näiden tulosten osalta näyttö on tilastollisesti heikompaa. Tutkielmassa kehitetty teoreettinen malli vaikuttaa tulosten perusteella antavan hyödyllisiä ennusteita suoratoistopalveluiden investointi- ja julkaisupäätöksistä. Koska malli yleistyy melko suoraan myös muille markkinoille, olisi kiinnostavaa testata sen soveltumista muilla samankaltaisilla markkinoilla.
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(2021)During the recent decades corporate income tax rates have declined. This development may be due to several issues, such as changes in the political environment or increased knowledge of behavioral effects of corporate taxation. One prominent explanation is tax competition. Tax competition is defined as noncooperative tax regime setting by independent governments such that the tax policy decisions affect the allocation of mobile tax base(s) among different countries. Tax regimes include the statutory tax rates as well as the tax bases and other parts of corporate tax systems. Tax competition is an important phenomenon for multiple reasons. Lower tax rates may imply issues in financing the public sector. On the other hand, it makes some of the issues of the international corporate tax system visible. This thesis reviews theories of tax competition. The aim is to provide an analysis of the different aspects of tax competition and review how different institutional structures are modelled in tax competition framework. Studying the main implications of tax competition is an important part of the thesis. The first formal models of tax competition consider a world economy which consists of many identical countries. Firms maximize profits and governments maximize utility of the representative agent. It is shown that tax competition drives tax rates to an inefficiently low level. Later tax competition research develops both the institutional set -up of tax competition and modelling frameworks applied to study it. The results of this thesis imply that the result of the first tax competition models is strong. Tax competition drives corporate tax rates to an inefficiently low level even if the key assumptions are relaxed. On the other hand, some important extensions imply that corporate income tax rates are in an optimal level even in presence of tax competition. However, in most cases tax competition is harmful since it drives corporate income tax rates to inefficiently low levels. On the other hand, tax competition literature also provides other results. Considering sequential tax competition instead of simultaneous shows that tax rates may in equilibrium be higher if one country acts as a leader. This may be one explanation why tax rates have not declined to zero as the famous race to the bottom hypothesis suggests. Tax competition literature also provides analysis on the effect of tax havens. These results are, however, more confusing. Tax competition can decrease welfare or be welfare improving. This thesis reviews important aspects of tax competition literature and focuses on the institutional set-up of theories of tax competition. There remain some gaps in the literature. Some institutional set-ups are not analysed in the tax competition context. On the other hand, literature focusing on the empirics of tax competition is scarce. One of the important aspects of tax competition is how to limit it. This issue has a great amount of current attention in the work of OECD, for example.
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(2021)Whereas primary school enrolment has grown to be nearly universal on a global scale, learning results have not kept up with the rapidly expanding systems. This is particularly true in Mozambique, where fourth-grade students lack basic skills of literacy and numeracy. Research has established that teacher quality has a large effect on student achievement. Out of the observable teacher characteristics, teacher content knowledge has most consistently been found to have a positive impact on student achievement. This study seeks to answer how large a causal impact teacher content knowledge has on student achievement in Mozambican primary schools. The data for this study come from a Service Delivery Indicator survey in Mozambique from 2014. They include assessments of fourth-grade students and their teachers in math and Portuguese, and are nationally representative. The empirical analysis exploits within-student across-subject variation. This allows to introduce not only student fixed effects, but also teacher fixed effects into the model, because all students in the sample are taught by a same teacher in both subjects, therefore strengthening the causal identification. First-differencing is then used to derive the estimable equation, which explains student achievement by teacher content knowledge only. The main results suggest that teacher content knowledge in math and Portuguese does not have a statistically significant impact on student achievement. However, further analyses show that there is considerable heterogeneity in the results. This is not unexpected, as Mozambique itself is a rather heterogenous country with large contrasts. Increasing teacher content knowledge by 1 SD increases student achievement by 0.14 SD among students with Portuguese as their first language, and by 0.13 SD among students in urban schools. Increasing the content knowledge of teachers whose knowledge is above the median also increases the achievement of students whose knowledge is above the median by over 0.12 SD. Based on the results, it is plausible that students’ poor knowledge of Portuguese is a fundamental problem for their learning, and something that should be prioritised. This could be done by improving language education at the earlier grades, or by expanding bilingual education, for instance. Because students with their knowledge below the median are unaffected by teacher content knowledge, this suggests that teaching is perhaps targeted to the more advanced students, and those who have already fallen behind benefit very little from it.
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(2023)Standard business cycle models rely on contemporaneous shocks to productivity in order to generate business cycles. Therefore a technological regress is necessary for a recession to occur. This is not always a satisfactory explanation, as for example the recession of 2001 is often not considered as created by a negative technological shock. Instead many economists believe it was caused by a revision in expectations. Technological news shocks is a topic that has gained interest in the recent macroeconomic literature and is aimed at tackling the aforementioned issue. A news shock is a shock which on arrival does not affect the variable of interest, instead the value is only expected to change in the future. In standard real business cycle models introduction of news shocks to productivity leads to recessions, as households experience a positive wealth effect while the firms do not yet change their behaviour. Thus a multitude of general equilibrium models designed specifically for news shocks have been proposed. This thesis investigates the role of technological news shocks as drivers of business cycles in Finland. To this end a Bayesian structural vector moving average model is used, which allows for non-invertible data generating processes. Non-invertibility arises when a shock can not be recovered from current and past observables, instead future observables are also needed. The prior of the model is informed with a combination of two DSGE models, one informing the news shock impulse responses, and other informing the rest of the impulse responses. Two out of three estimated specifications of the model do create a positive co-movement of the included macroeconomic aggregates. This is not reflected in a non-informative specification, in which output growth rate increases, but the growth rate of hours worked decreases. The results suggest that news shocks could indeed play a role in the Finnish business cycles, but more research into the topic would be in place.
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(2021)This thesis studies possible factors associated with the earnings differences between Finnish and Swedish immigrants at the beginning of the 20th century in the United States. Economics literature has provided multiple explanations for the economic assimilation of immigrants. Fundamentally immigrant assimilation in economic theory is seen as a process of country-specific human capital accumulation. Many factors, however, can affect this process. In this thesis, I will test whether the earnings differences between Finnish and Swedish immigrants were associated with their location choices, size of the immigrant communities, English skills and linguistic distance between immigrant’s mother tongue and English. In addition, I test whether even within industries, the earnings differences persist and whether in addition to Swedes, Finns also differ from other Nordic immigrants. To do this, I will use a longitudinal dataset of 28 621 European male immigrants observed in 1900, 1910 and 1920 and use pooled OLS to estimate the earnings differences of Finnish and Swedish immigrants at different stages of their migration period. First, I find that at the time of arrival or at most 5 years after it, Finnish immigrants earn more than otherwise comparable Swedish immigrants. After more than 30 years in the United States, however, Finns earn substantially less than their Swedish counterparts. Also, not only did the Finns diverge from the earnings of the Swedes with the time spent in the United States, but also from their initial level of earnings. I then find that controlling for location choices and the size of the immigrant communities slightly reduce the earnings gap between long-term Finnish and Swedish immigrants. Differences in English skills, on the other hand, are not found to be associated with the earnings differences. Instead, I find that long-term Finnish and Swedish immigrants have almost equal probabilities of knowing English and that Finnish immigrants accumulate language skills at a substantial rate after arrival. The negative earnings gap among long-term Finnish and Swedish immigrants persists even within industries. However, although remaining negative, controlling for industry fixed effects reduces the earnings gap by over 50 %, suggesting that a large fraction of the negative earnings gap was associated with Finnish immigrants being active in low-paying industries. Finally, I find that the similar pattern applies not only to Swedish immigrants but also to other Nordic immigrants. At the time of arrival, Finns seem to earn more than otherwise comparable Nordic immigrants but after more than 30 years in the United States, Finns earn substantially less than their Nordic counterparts.
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(2022)During the past decade, central banks have become even more central to modern economies than before. Their main goal is price stability, and they try to achieve it with various methods. The effectivity of the traditional methods, especially controlling the short-term interest rates, has become smaller due to the zero lower bound constraint, and new unconventional methods have been introduced. This thesis investigates the effects of the unconventional monetary policy actions of the European Central Bank. Structural vector autoregressive models are one of the main tools in studying the effects of the monetary policy. To identify a monetary policy shock, one traditionally needs to impose restrictions to the model. However, that requires restrictive assumptions about the dynamics of the model which is being studied. To overcome this issue, one can identify the shocks statistically by some properties of the data, without any additional restrictions. A key benefit of statistical identification is the possibility to test the plausibility of previously used sign or zero restrictions. In the empirical application of this thesis, a Bayesian vector autoregressive model identified statistically based on non-normality of the error terms is utilised to study the effects of the European Central Bank's unconventional monetary policy. The Bayesian estimation was performed with a Differential Evolution Markov Chain algorithm, allowing fast calculation. The empirical analysis resulted in two key findings. First, the impulse response functions implied by the model are in line with previous studies and the statistically identified model gives support to the previously used sign restrictions. Second, the model is sensitive to the sample period which suggests that the effects of the European Central Banks policy actions might have changed over time.
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(2021)Since 1991, Finland has subsidized homeownership with first-time homebuyer’s stamp duty and transfer tax exemptions. Under certain conditions, buyers with ownership shares of at least 0.5 are exempted from paying a tax of 2% on the free-of-debt price for housing company dwellings and 4% on the free-of-debt price for directly owned houses. The previous empirical literature suggests that transfer taxes may lead to large reductions in housing transactions, household mobility, and housing prices. This thesis studies whether there is evidence of similar effects among first-time homebuyers by focusing on the first-time homebuyer’s transfer tax exemption. The analysis is based on microdata provided by Statistics Finland and Tax Administration on all permanent residents in Finland and housing company shareholdings. Therefore, this study is limited to housing company dwelling transactions, and it does not cover the effects on directly-owned house transactions. The effect on the first-time home purchase decision is studied using a regression discontinuity design among a subgroup that has not lived in owner-occupied dwellings in adulthood except potentially in the household of their parents. The effect on housing prices is studied using a fixed-effects regression model. The findings show that first-time home purchases drop by roughly 30% at the age threshold of 40 years, where buyers become ineligible for the tax exemption. Similarly, covariate-adjusted estimates show that tax-exempted purchases are on average roughly 1% more expensive than purchases without the tax exemption. If the underlying identification assumptions hold, these estimates can be interpreted as the causal effects of the tax exemption. However, there are potential threats to internal validity. The credibility of the assumptions is studied by conducting graphical and formal tests that typically accompany regression discontinuity designs. There is some evidence consistent with the possibility that the assumptions do not hold, but the evidence is also consistent with alternative explanations related to data limitations. Neither possibility can be ruled out definitively.
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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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(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.
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