Browsing by study line "Taloustieteen yleinen opintosuunta"
Now showing items 21-40 of 76
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(2022)Producing timely information regarding the current and future state of the economy is important for the practice of economic policy: the delay between the implementation of policy measures and the emergence of their effects is typically considerable, which creates a need to anticipate developments in macroeconomic variables. The producer price index is one such variable: producer price indices are used to track changes in the general price level of goods produced within an economy from the point-of-view of producers, which makes them prominent indicators of inflationary pressures and business cycle conditions. The principal objective of this thesis is to investigate whether the Finnish Producer Price Index for Manufactured Goods could be reliably forecasted in the short run using large sets of external predictors. Increasing the number of predictors exposes standard forecasting methods to inaccuracies and makes their application outright infeasible once the number of variables exceeds the number of observations available for the estimation of the forecasting model. Various alternative methods have been proposed to counter this issue. This thesis provides a broad overview of these methods as well as other relevant issues pertaining to the forecasting macroeconomic variables. Given that no single framework has proven to dominate others in practical applications, a selection of methods has been chosen for the empirical section of this thesis. These methods represent two different approaches to high-dimensional forecasting: dynamic factor models and penalized regressions. The effectiveness of dynamic factor models is based on the assumption that relevant information contained in high-dimensional data can be summarized using only relatively few underlying factors, the estimates of which can, in turn, be used for forecasting. The solution offered by penalized regressions, on the other hand, is based on striking a balance between the bias and variance of the forecasts. Out of the broader class of penalized methods, four different variations will be utilized in this thesis: the Ridge, Lasso, Elastic Net, and Adaptive Lasso. The empirical performance of the methods will be assessed by conducting a simulated out-of-sample forecasting experiment, in which a series of consecutive forecasts are estimated for the target variable using historical data. These forecasts are, in turn, compared to their realized counterparts. The objective of the experimental arrangement is to produce representative information regarding the empirical accuracy of the respective forecasting models by emulating circumstances faced in real-time forecasting: only information that would have been available at the time is used to produce each forecast. The set of predictors used in the experiment is composed of monthly economic time series collected from a variety of sources. Based on the forecasting experiment, the benefit of the high-dimensional models in terms of average forecasting accuracy turns out to be only marginal in comparison to a univariate autoregressive benchmark at the one-, two-, and three-month horizons. Moreover, the differences among the respective high-dimensional methods are found to be insignificant. On the other hand, more favorable results are achieved by using relatively timely market-based variables to predict the concurrent rather than strictly future values of the index. In this case, the penalized models perform particularly well. The results indicate that leveraging the advantage in publication lag enjoyed by external predictors for the purpose of contemporaneous prediction, or nowcasting, could represent the most potential for predicting the producer price index.
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(2020)Työn tuottavuuden merkitys kansantalouden tasolla talouskasvulle ja mikrotaloustasolla yritysten tapauksessa niiden menestymiselle on merkittävä. Työn tuottavuuteen vaikuttavien tekijöiden kirjo on laaja ja tässä tutkielmassa keskitytään tarkastelemaan henkisen pääoman vaikutusta työn tuottavuuteen. Tarkastelun keskiössä on keinot henkisen pääoman konvertoimiseksi henkilöstötuottavuudeksi ja henkilöstötuottavuuden tilan mallintamiseksi. Tutkimuskysymyksenä tarkastellaan suomalaisten yritysten kannattavuuden ja henkilöstötuottavuusindeksin korrelaatiota. Henkisen pääoman olemassaolo ei ole tae yrityksen menestymiselle. Keskeistä henkilöstötuottavuuden kannalta on ottaa yrityksen omaama henkinen pääoma hyötykäyttöön. Haasteelliseksi tilanteen tekee se, että henkinen pääoma on sidoksissa yrityksen henkilöstöön. Tutkielmassa esiteltävän aiemman kirjallisuuden mukaan henkilöstötuottavuuden stimuloimisessa johtamiskäytänteet ja toimintatavat työyhteisöissä ovat mahdollisia keinoja vaikuttaa henkilöstötuottavuuden kehittymiseen työyhteisössä. Tutkielmassa henkilöstötuottavuutta kuvataan henkilöstötuottavuusindeksin (HTI) avulla. Menetelmä perustuu Ossi Auran ja muun tutkimusryhmän kehittämään malliin kuvata työyhteisön henkilöstötuottavuuden tilaa. Mallin keskeisiä piirteitä on jaotella henkilöstötuottavuus kolmen osatekijän summaksi: motivaatio, osaaminen ja työkyky. Tiedonkeruumenetelmänä henkilöstötuottavuusindeksin laskemiseksi toimii työyhteisöiden tilaa kuvaavien työyhteisökyselyiden hyödyntäminen. Yritysten taloudellista tilaa tarkastellaan tilinpäätöstietojen perusteella ja kannattavuuden indikaattorina toimii yrityksen käyttökateprosentti. Tutkimusmenetelmänä toimii pitkittäinen tutkimus. Aineisto on kerätty Työeläkeyhtiö Elon asiakkaille tarkoitetun työyhteisökyselyn avulla siten, että aineistoon valittu yritys on suorittanut vähintään kahdesti. Henkilöstötuottavuusindeksin ja yritysten taloudellisen tilanteen yhteyttä tarkastellaan lineaarista regressiomallia hyödyntäen. Empiirisessä osiossa tarkastelun kohteena on henkilöstötuottavuusindeksin ja yritystoiminnan kannattavuuden sekä henkilöstötuottavuusindeksin ja yritystoiminnan kasvun yhteys. Kannattavuuden muutosta kuvataan sekä käyttökateprosentin prosenttiyksiköittäisen että prosentuaalisen muutoksen avulla. Liiketoiminnan kasvua kuvataan liikevaihtoprosentin prosentuaalisen muutoksen avulla. Lineaarisen regressiomallin tuloksia tarkastellaan koko aineiston tasolla sekä osajoukkojen osalta valittujen määrittävien tekijöiden osalta. Tutkielman empiirisen osion tuloksien mukaan HTI:n muutoksien osalta, motivaatio on tärkein kolmesta osatekijästä. Itse tutkimuskysymyksen osalta saavutetut tulokset osoittavat, että henkilöstötuottavuuden ja yritysten kannattavuuden välillä ei havaita selkeää yhteyttä. Yhteyttä ei ole havaittavissa myöskään henkilöstötuottavuusindeksin ja liiketoiminnan kasvun väliltä. Tutkielman empiirinen osuus antaa hyvin perspektiiviä tutkittavaan ilmiöön ja antaa syytä aiempien tutkimusten tulosten kriittiselle tarkastelulle. Henkilöstötuottavuusindeksin muutoksien osalta motivaatio on tärkein kolmesta osatekijästä.
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(2022)Labor market effects of military service have been a popular topic for economic research, and in a subset of these studies, interactions with elements like race, parental socioeconomic status, and ability have been submitted as considerations. Introducing an Mincer-type empirical model for framing the problem, I undertake a literature survey of studies concerning themselves with such treatment effect heterogeneities, complemented by a brief empirical survey using CPS data. It is found that, whether the overall effect of service is positive or negative, comparatively gains/non-losses in earnings and education tend to accrue to the disadvantaged individuals over advantaged ones. The plurality of studies correspondingly find positive-to-neutral effects along this gradient, although neutral-to-negative findings are also featured. The contexts under study commonly involve notable influence from educational subsidies and draft deferment incentives, but there are some counterfactuals, which however are unable to establish a definite causal mechanism between service and earnings or education. The main findings of the paper should be considered in making adjustments to existing compulsory service policies.
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(2020)Finanssikriisin seurauksena keskuspankkien rahapolitiikan liikkumavara on vähentynyt, mikä on johtanut vaihtoehtoisten rahapolitiikan strategioiden harkitsemiseen. Yksi ehdotetuista strategioista on siirtyminen hintatasotavoitteeseen. Hintatasotavoitteessa keskuspankki pyrkii pitämään hintojen kehityksen valitsemallaan tavoiteuralla ja korjaa inflaatiotavoitteesta poiketen menneiden shokkien aikaansaamat poikkeamat. Tutkielmassa tarkastellaan viimeaikaista tutkimusta hintatasotavoitteseen liittyen ja selvitetään voisiko hintatasotavoite olla parempi rahapolitiikan strategia kuin inflaatiotavoite. Tarkastelun keskiössä ovat hintatasotavoitteen vahvat oletukset, mahdolliset edut ja siirtymän riskit. Tutkimusmenetelmänä on kirjallisuuskatsaus ja tavoitteena on muodostaa kokonaiskuva tutkimuksesta ja selvittää mihin jatkotutkimus pitäisi suunnata. Hintatasotavoitteen mahdollisia etuja ovat hintojen pitkän aikavälin ennustettavuus, inflaation ja tuotannon volatiliteetin vähentyminen sekä parempi suoriutuminen nollakorkorajalla. Edut voivat olla haastavia saavuttaa ja ne nojaavat vahvoihin oletuksiin inflaatio-odotuksien muodostumisesta uuskeynesiläisen mallin mukaan sekä keskuspankin kyvystä sitoutua siihen strategiana. Hintatasotavoitteeseen siirtymiseen liittyy paljon riskejä ja kustannuksia, joiden seurauksena nettovaikutus voi olla negatiivinen. Talouden toimijat eivät välttämättä sisäistä uutta strategiaa, jolloin vaikutus inflaatio-odotuksiin jää vaimeaksi. Lisäksi se saattaa aiheuttaa haasteita keskuspankin kommunikaatiolle ja uskottavuuden ylläpitämiselle. Hintatasotavoite suoriutuu teoriassa inflaatiotavoitetta paremmin, mutta tulokset ovat malliriippuvaisia ja usein ristiriitaisia keskenään. Lisätutkimuksen tarpeet liittyvät inflaatio-odotuksien muodostumiseen, oppimisvaiheen kestoon ja keskuspankin uskottavuuden ylläpitämiseen. Keskuspankit näkevät hintatasotavoitteen riskit edelleen merkittävinä ja siirtymä olisi monella tapaa hyppy tuntemattomaan.
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(2019)The measured gross domestic product, GDP, does not consider non-paid homework in its figures. However, the relative size of the so called household production is large both from time use perspective but also as monetary wise. According to Statistics Finland, the non-salaried homework was 39.8 % of the measured Finnish GDP in 2016. Moreover, Finns spent on average three hours and 21 minutes on daily basis on household production in 2009. Yet, the standard economic theory also excludes household production in the models although individuals are known to allocate their time between market work, homework and leisure. The real business cycle theory attempts to explain and study the properties of business cycles. In this Master’s Thesis, the household production is studied within the real business cycle (RBC) theory. The purpose is to compare the benefits of including household production into the real business cycle model to the standard alternative where it is excluded. Real business cycles are studied by constituting a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model (DSGE) for both cases: one for the household production and one for the standard non-household production. The models constituted are for a frictionless closed economy. Both models are then calibrated with Finnish figures and simulated. The results indicate that market hours are procyclical in both models. However, the correlation between output and market hours is 1.33 times larger in the household production model than in the standard model. Also, the household production model generates highly countercyclical home hours. Yet, the Finnish time use data cannot prove the procyclicality of household production hours. The main reason is that the time use research is conducted only every ten years. Also, the timing of the research does not reconcile with the Finnish recessions. Hence, the data available cannot explain the countercyclical home hours indicated by the household production real business cycle model. In this sense, the results presented can only be taken as describing facts of the Finnish economy when household production is considered.
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(2019)In my thesis, I estimate the childhood exposure effects of regions in Finland on the probability of completing high school matriculation examination. I estimate the degree to which the differences in high school matriculation rates across regions are driven by the causal effects of places. I study almost 180,000 children who move across regions by exploiting variation in the age of children at the time of the move. I find that neighbourhoods might have a significant childhood exposure effect on girls of low-income families. The outcomes of girls of low-income families change linearly in proportion to the amount of time they spend growing up in a new area at a rate of approximately 6 % per year of exposure. It implies that children who move at birth would pick up 90 % of the difference in permanent residents’ outcomes between their origin and destination regions by the age of 16. The results for boys support the critical age model and imply that areas have no childhood exposure effects on boys: the outcomes of boys are unrelated to their age at the time of the move. This implies that the likelihood of boys to complete high school may be unaffected by the families' choices where to live, or boys are affected by the move to a new area at similar magnitude irrespective of the age at the time of the move. The estimation using data of all girls gives a less clear result, which might imply heterogeneity of exposure effects across parents' income levels. The results are robust to alternative specifications and to the overidentification test based on different birth cohorts.
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(2020)In social sciences, as in health sciences, there is an increasing interest in exploring differences in treatment effects amongst subpopulations and even individuals. In many cases, researchers must rely on observational data where the assignment mechanism of the treatment is non-randomized. Nevertheless, by including a sufficient set of covariates in the used model, it is possible to draw a causal inference. However, some causal structures have proved to cause bias in the treatment effect estimates when particular pre-treated variables in them are conditioned. In existing literature there is no consensus as to how to treat these structures, especially in the heterogeneous treatment effect estimation case. The aim of this thesis is to explore how causal structures affect covariate selection in the heterogeneous treatment effect estimation context. The theoretical background of this subject is built on the potential outcomes framework and structural causal models. This thesis provides an overview of heterogeneous treatment effect estimation methods, including a more detailed view on the causal forest method. The second stage of the thesis is carried out by executing a simulation study where the causal forest method is applied with different causal structures. In each simulation, different sets of conditioned covariates are tested. The simulation study results prove almost consistent. In every simulation except one, a higher number of variables implicates improvement in performance. Surprisingly, this result is applicable even to the cases where structural causal models literature suggests not to condition all the variables. According to the results of the simulation study, a practical recommendation would be to include as many relevant pre-treated, non-instrumental variables in the model as possible. The results are in line with practical recommendations given in potential outcomes framework literature.
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(2020)The number of unskilled workers working in Finnish manufacturing has been declining in recent years. From 2010 to 2017 the total number of workers in Finnish manufacturing declined by roughly 40 000 workers and the number of unskilled workers, as defined in this paper, declined by roughly 30 000 workers during the same time-period. This paper examines the role that outward foreign direct investment has played in the decline of the employment of unskilled workers in Finnish manufacturing over the years 2010-2017 and whether foreign direct investment directed to certain countries has contributed to the decline more than investment directed to other countries. Theories on international fragmentation of production suggest that the most unskilled labour-intensive processes are shifted to countries more abundant in unskilled labour. To estimate the effects of foreign direct investment on the number of unskilled workers working in Finnish manufacturing a dataset containing the average annual wage of all workers in Finnish manufacturing, the value of output, the value of the stock of machinery and the number of employees in foreign affiliates is used. The dataset covers the years 2010-2017.Turnover in foreign affiliates and the value of imported intermediate goods are used as alternative measures for foreign direct investment in separate models. The regression model is a first differences model where the number of unskilled workers is the dependent variable and the other variables mentioned above are the independent variables. The first differences models do not yield any statistically significant results and neither do alternative specifications used in this paper, which are a second differences estimator and a lagged effects estimator where the all other variables are differenced twice and the variable describing foreign direct investment is differenced once. These results do not necessarily mean that foreign direct investment has played no role in the decline of the number of unskilled workers working in Finnish manufacturing but the effects are not significant on an aggregated industry level. This question should be studied more carefully using more specific industry-level data or even firm-level data.
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(2022)Tutkielmassa tutkin kuluttajan valintakäyttäytymistä hyväntekeväisyydessä ja hyväntekeväisyysjärjestöjen käyttämiä tuuppauksia lahjoituksien lisäämiseksi. Tuuppauksilla tarkoitetaan mitä tahansa valinta-arkkitehtuurin muotoa, jolla voidaan vaikuttaa kuluttajan käyttäytymiseen kuluttajan valinnanvapauteen ja kustannuksiin koskematta. Tutkimuksen tarkoituksena on selvittää, miten tuuppaukset vaikuttavat hyväntekeväisyyslahjoituksiin. Jotta voidaan ymmärtää tuuppauksien muodostamaa kokonaisuutta, on tärkeää ensin ymmärtää, miten kuluttajat toimivat erilaisissa valintatilanteissa, ja miksi kuluttajat lahjoittavat hyväntekeväisyyteen. Hyväntekeväisyysjärjestöt käyttävät tuuppauksien avulla näitä tietoja apunaan kerätessään lisää lahjoituksia. Tutkimuksessa tarkastelen tarkemmin kolmea eri tuuppausstrategiaa verraten niitä muihin asiayhteyksiin. Näiden lisäksi tutkin, voiko aikaepäjohdonmukaisuutta käyttää tuuppauksena. Oikein käytettynä tuuppaukset ovat tehokkaita työkaluja, mutta ne ovat herkkiä muutoksille ja saattavat helposti aiheuttaa erilaisia heijastusvaikutuksia, jotka voivat näkyä negatiivisina sivuvaikutuksina. Tuuppaukset herättävät huolta niiden eettisyyden kannalta. Vaikka hyväntekeväisyydessä lahjoitukset menevät hyvään tarkoitukseen, onko eettisesti oikein käyttää hyväksi tietoa siitä, miten kuluttajat käyttäytyvät lahjoitustilanteissa.
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(2020)The turnover of heterogeneous firms has been shown to behave differently at business cycle frequencies. Traditionally it has been noted that the turnover of small firms is more procyclical. The evidence is however less unambiguous when it comes to more recent business cycle contractions, such as the financial crisis. Majority of the literature considers access to credit to be the driving force behind the differences in cyclicality. Due to asymmetrical information banks intermediating credit consider small firms to be riskier than large. During an economic downturn, safe investments are favored and thus the wedge in access to credit between large and small firms increases. The thesis consequently focuses on the impact of supply of credit on firms. More specifically, the study looks at the responses of firms of different size in Finland to unconventional monetary policy shocks by the European Central Bank (ECB). Unconventional monetary policy shocks are identified in several ways in the thesis. All approaches are based on a six-variate vector autoregressive (VAR) model. The euro wide variables are the gross domestic product (GDP), consumer prices, ECB’s balance sheet, financial stress measured by the Composite Indicator of Systemic Stress (CISS), the spread between the EONIA (Euro OverNight Index Average) and main refinancing operations (MRO) rates and the MRO rate. All variables are provided by either the ECB or Eurostat. The series were aggregated or interpolated to a monthly frequency and seasonally adjusted if needed. The turnover data for Finnish firms is from Statistics Finland. Sales inquiry data collected by Statistics Finland is used as the series for large firms. On the other hand, the series for small firms is based on value added tax data, which covers nearly the entire economy. The turnovers of large and small firms enter the baseline model one at a time. The thesis concentrates on a time period during which the unconventional measures have been in place, that is between January 2010 up until December 2018. In the thesis, the impact of unconventional monetary policy measures such as the targeted longer-term refinancing operations and the asset purchase programme is studied through the balance sheet of the ECB. Zero and sign restrictions are used to uncover the structural shocks. In the baseline identification, a shock to the central bank’s balance sheet is assumed to increase the size of the ECB’s balance sheet and decrease financial stress as well as the EONIA-MRO spread for two months. It is additionally assumed that the shock does not have affect GDP, prices and the MRO rate upon impact. The restrictions are implemented through a Bayesian rejection algorithm. The algorithm draws a variance-covariance decomposition from the posterior distribution of the model and checks whether is produces impulse responses that fulfill the restrictions. The results are represented as the median response of the accepted draws. The results indicate that a shock to the balance sheet of the ECB increases the turnovers of both small and large Finnish firms. The positive impact manifests in two stages; it peaks some three months after the shock for the first time and later again. The impact on small firms is at its highest within 12 months of the innovation. The response of the turnover of large firms is less pronounced directly after the shock but lasts for longer. In summary, the results suggest that the impact is stronger for small firms but more persistent for large. Therefore, the thesis concludes that unconventional monetary policy measures have not benefited small Finnish firms disproportionately.
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(2019)The topic of this thesis is to explore the impact of immigration on the task specialization of natives. According to the literature, immigration does not have a significant negative impact on the employment nor the wages of natives. A one possible reason for this can be imperfect substitutability which means that natives and immigrants with similar education are not perfect substitutes and thus, they do not compete for the same jobs. Natives may have a comparative advantage in interactive tasks and immigrants in manual tasks. An exact research question is to investigate if less educated natives locate to less manual and more interactive jobs as the shares of similarly educated foreign-born people rise. This is implemented by constructing variables which describe the manual and interactive task intensities of different occupation classes. Peri and Sparber (2009) and Amuedo-Dorantes and de la Rica (2011) have investigated similar questions and therefore, their studies are the main references of this thesis. The data of this study is provided by Ipums International and O*Net data from the US Department of Labor. The first of these two is census microdata from France and it includes eight samples between the years 1962 and 2011. The second dataset contains numerical values which describe the importance of different abilities of different occupations. The analysis is made by applying the method of ordinary least squares and the method of instrumental variables. The instrumental variable for the shares of foreign-born workers is formed by imputing the shares of immigrants from several source countries, based on the distribution of immigrant groups across regions in the year 1962. The results support the hypothesis rather well. A one percentage point increase in the foreign-born share of less educated labour force lowers the manual-to-interactive task ratio of natives by approximately two percentages on average. However, the results regarding to different demographic groups are varied. The most unexpected observation is that the share of female immigrants affects the task specialization of both male and female natives much more than share of male immigrants does. In addition, education, age, the industry of occupation, and the business cycle of an economy seem to have impact on the possibilities of natives to shift to less manual and more interactive tasks. The results suggest that inflows of less educated immigrants indeed push less educated natives towards less manual and more interactive jobs. Nonetheless, because the estimates of previous studies have been smaller, it is likely that the estimates of this thesis are biased upward and the real impact of immigration on the task specialization of natives is more moderate.
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(2022)The research question that my thesis is based on is two-fold: on one hand, my goal is to investigate using instrumental variables in identifying the shocks in a structural vector autoregressive model, while on the other hand my goal is to replicate an already existing paper by Antolin-Diaz and Rubio-Ramirez, which uses narrative sign restrictions in identifying the shocks. Both methods are new, which makes the contributions that I am making relevant and interesting. The use of instrumental variables in economics has been hindered by the fact that one must be careful about the instruments that they use. Strong instruments have all the desired properties and present no issues when using them in identification, but if the instruments are weak, most of the inference measures are wrong and cannot be used in drawing conclusions. This is the contribution that the method proposed by Olea, Stock and Watson present, and I am using. Their method is robust to weak instruments as well, which enables a freer usage of instruments in identification of models. I am using two different instruments and the data that Antolin-Diaz and Rubio-Ramirez use in their paper. The main result of the comparison that I do is that the methods provide results that are distributed in a similar way, which indicates that the two methods are similar. The one difference was the existence of a price puzzle when using one of the instruments, and this is something that is investigated in detail, discussing about whether the existence of a price puzzle can be a feature of the model or if it is always an indication of the model in question being misspecified. I believe that my thesis provides support for both methods being used as they are confirming the results that they arrive at. I also conclude that my evidence can provide some more information about the price puzzle, specifically suggesting that in some cases the price puzzle can appear due to the monetary policy decisions of the decision-making authorities rather than due to the model being misspecified.
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(2019)Tutkielmassa tehdään katsaus taitovaatimuksen tutkimukseen ja työn taitovaatimuksissa tapahtuneisiin muutoksiin Suomessa 2000-luvulla. Katsauksen tarkoituksena on ymmärtää, miten työn taitovaatimukset ovat muuttuneet viime vuosikymmeninä teknologian kehityksen seurauksena ja miksi. Työn taitovaatimusten muutosta ja teknologian kehityksen roolia tässä muutoksessa on tärkeä ymmärtää, jotta muuttuvat taitovaatimukset voidaan parhaalla mahdollisella tavalla ottaa huomioon yhteiskunnan päätöksenteossa nyt ja tulevaisuudessa. Tarkastelen tutkielmassa kolmea eri työn taitovaatimusten muutosta kuvaavaa mallia. Nämä mallit ovat osaamista suosivan teknologian muutoksen malli, tehtäväpohjainen malli ja sosiaalisia taitoja korostava malli. Tutkielman rakenne on rakennettu tutkimuksen historian ympärille siten, että kussakin luvussa esitellään kronologisessa järjestyksessä kunakin ajanjaksona vallalla ollut malli työn taitovaatimusten muutoksesta ja sen taustatekijöistä. Teoreettisen osuuden lisäksi kussakin luvussa tarkastellaan taitovaatimusten muutosta myös empiiristen tulosten kautta. Ensimmäinen tutkielmassa esiteltävä malli on osaamista suosivan teknologian muutoksen malli. Mallissa teknologian muutoksen oletetaan olevan luonteeltaan osaamista suosivaa, mikä tarkoittaa, että se täydentää korkeataitoisten työntekijöiden työtä. Empiiriset havainnot näyttivät tukevan havaintoa, sillä koulutetun työvoiman kysynnän kasvu osui samaan aikaan teknologian nopean kehityksen kanssa. Mallin puutteena on, että se tarkastelee taitojen muutosta liian kapeasta näkökulmasta, eikä mallin avulla ole mahdollista tarkastella työllisyysvaikutuksia saman koulutustaustan omaavien välillä tai polarisaation ilmiötä. Osaamista suosivan teknologian muutoksen jälkeen vallalle nousi tehtäväpohjainen malli, jossa taitovaatimusten muutosta tarkastellaan työtehtävien kautta jaottelemalla työtehtävät rutiininomaisiin ja ei rutiininomaisiin tehtäviin ja fyysisiin ja analyyttisiin tai interaktiivisiin työtehtäviin. Tämän uuden jaottelun avulla huomattiin, että teknologian muutos näytti korvaavan etenkin rutiininomaisia työtehtäviä ja täydentävän analyyttisia ja ei rutiininomaisia työtehtäviä. Fyysisiin ja ei rutiininomaisiin työtehtäviin teknologian muutoksella ei näyttänyt juuri olevan vaikutusta. Teknologian nopea kehitys näyttää tuoreiden havaintojen valossa ajaneen myös tehtäväpohjaisen mallin ohi, sillä teknologian kykenee kasvavissa määrin automatisoimaan myös ei rutiininomaisia työtehtäviä. Tuoreimmassa tutkimuksessa onkin kasvavissa määrin korostettu sosiaalisten taitojen kasvavaa merkitystä työelämässä, sillä teknologia ei vielä tällä hetkellä kykene korvaamaan ihmistä monitahoisen sosiaalisen kanssakäymisen tilanteissa.
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(2021)Tutkielmassa tarkastellaan kulutuserojen toimivuutta taloudellisen eriarvoisuuden mittarina. Taloudellista eriarvoisuutta tarkastellaan länsimaissa ensisijaisesti tuloerojen pohjalta. Ei ole kuitenkaan konsensusta siitä, kuvaavatko tuloerot vai kulutuserot paremmin taloudellista eriarvoisuutta. Tutkielman pääkysymys on, kuinka hyvin kulutuserot toimivat taloudellisen eriarvoisuuden indikaattorina teorian ja käytännön tekijöiden näkökulmasta. Keskeisimpiä tavoitteita on muodostaa hyvä kokonaiskuva kulutuserotutkimuksesta ja selvittää kulutuserojen mittausmenetelmien vahvuudet, ongelmat ja haasteet. Lisäksi verrataan tulo- ja kulutuspohjaisten mittareiden kykyjä mitata taloudellista eriarvoisuutta ja tarkastellaan miten kulutuserot ovat kehittyneet suhteessa tuloeroihin. Tutkimusmenetelmänä käytetään kirjallisuuskatsausta, jossa syvennytään yhdysvaltalaisiin ja eurooppalaisiin kulutuseroja käsitteleviin artikkeleihin. Tutkielman alussa verrataan tulo- ja kulutuspohjaisten mittareiden kykyä mitata taloudellista eriarvoisuutta tarkastelemalla niiden heikkouksia ja vahvuuksia. Aihetta katsotaan sekä teorian että käytännöllisyyden näkökulmasta. Seuraavaksi tarkastellaan, miten kulutuseroja mitataan ja minkälaisia tuloksia tutkimuksissa on saatu. Ensin käsitellään perinteisiä kyselypohjaisia tutkimuksia ja tämän jälkeen vaihtoehtoisia datalähteitä ja mittausmenetelmiä hyödyntäviä tutkimuksia. Tarkastelun kohteena on erityisesti datan laatuun liittyvät tekijät. Tutkielmassa käsiteltyjen elinkaari- ja pysyvän tulotason hypoteesien mukaan kulutus on tuloja relevantimpi eriarvoisuuden tarkastelussa. Käytännöllisyyteen liittyvät tekijät ovat kuitenkin olleet teoriaa merkittävämmässä asemassa valittaessa näiden kahden väliltä. Kulutuspohjaisen eriarvoisuuden mittaamisen keskeisimpänä ongelmana on datan laatuun liittyvät tekijät. Huolta kulutusmenojen kyselytutkimuksien datan laadusta on herättänyt suuri ero kyselytutkimuksien ja kansantalouden tilinpidon perusteella laskettujen kokonaismenojen välillä. Datan laatua heikentävät käsiteltyjen artikkelien mukaan kulutusmenojen kyselytutkimuksien pienet otoskoot, tuloja epäyhtenäisemmät kulutuksen määritelmät tietoaineistoissa, kulutuksen ja menojen eroavuus, raportoinnin haasteellisuudesta sekä unohtamisesta johtuva tahaton yli- ja aliraportointi sekä erityisesti rikkaimpien kotitalouksien muita ryhmiä yleisempi aliraportointi. Tutkielmassa käsitellyt perinteiset kyselypohjaiset tutkimukset ja vaihtoehtoisia menetelmiä hyödyntävät tutkimukset antavat kulutuserojen kehityksestä hyvin erilaiset kuvat. Perinteisten kyselypohjaisten tutkimusten mukaan kulutuserojen kasvu on ollut huomattavasti tuloeroja maltillisempaa ja välillä niiden kehitys on jopa mennyt vastakkaisiin suuntiin. Vaihtoehtoisia menetelmiä hyödyntävien tutkimuksien mukaan kulutuserot ovat kasvaneet aiempaa luultua enemmän ja osan mukaan kulutuserojen kehitys on seurannut hyvinkin läheisesti tuloerojen kehitystä. Monia vaihtoehtoisia menetelmiä hyödyntäviä tutkimuksia on kuitenkin kritisoitu niiden kyvyttömyydestä korjata kyselytutkimuksiin liittyviä mittausvirheitä, mikä on ollut niiden lähtökohtainen tavoite. Kulutuksen ensisijaista käyttöä taloudellisen eriarvoisuuden mittaamisessa puoltaa erityisesti elinkaari- ja pysyvän tulotason hypoteesi. Tarkasteltujen artikkeleiden perusteella ongelmaksi muodostuu etenkin datan laatu, jota tulisi parantaa kasvattamalla otoskokoa ja kehittämällä itse kyselytutkimusta tarkemmaksi. Toinen vaihtoehto on kehittää rekisteripohjaisia menetelmiä, joissa kulutus lasketaan tulojen ja säästöjen perusteella käyttäen valtion eri rekisteri ja tietokantoja. Tällöin kulutuserojen mittaus olisi täysin riippumaton kyselytutkimuksista ja niihin liittyvistä ongelmista.
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(2020)As of the 1980s, global poverty has witnessed a serious reduction. In numerous occasions, the reduction in poverty has been connected to an agrarian reform. A land reform is a type of agrarian reform which involves redistribution of land or changes in the legal framework for land administration. A large body of empirical studies have found that land reforms have proven to be a prominent tool in alleviating poverty. In this thesis, I examine the economic outcomes of the Finnish land reform of 1918. The reform enabled tenant farmers, which covered around half of the rural population, to buy their farms with a fraction of the market price. As my identification strategy, I use instrumental variables analysis, exploiting arguably exogenous variation in the regional distribution of tenants. I employ municipal level data from decennial agricultural censuses from 1910 to 1941. I find that the land reform increased capital intensity by around 23% in the two subsequent decades, which correspond to over third of the overall increase. Using a plain stochastic output model, I evaluate that this would signify a 14% increase in output at the farm level. Furthermore, I compute that the reform accelerated the structural transformation of agriculture toward dairy farming by 10 years. These effects are robust to controlling various municipal characteristics, such as natural conditions, population density and wealth. To confirm that the analysis does not simply capture dissimilarities in pre-reform development, I report baseline differences in municipal characteristics by regressing outcomes on the proportion of tenants with a cross-section for 1910. These findings question the traditional view that the Finnish land reform regressed progress in agriculture. They are in line with the evidence on economic benefits of land reforms. As a novel contribution, this thesis is able to show that the effects are persistent. The exact mechanism driving the results could not be distinguished. I suspect, that the causal channel operated either through the farmers' improved incentives or an access to collateralizable assets, both dependent on property rights.
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(2021)This thesis studies lifetime earnings inequality in Finland using a unique dataset based on administrative data from the Finnish Centre for Pensions. I analyse intragenerational lifetime earnings, their distribution and mobility of individual’s in the earnings distribution over the life cycle to determine whether Finnish cohorts are becoming more or less equal based on their lifetime earnings. In addition, I examine the association between current and lifetime earnings over the life cycle. The analysis includes nine cohorts born every five years between 1940 and 1980. Altogether 4 140 individuals are included in the analysis (n=4 140). However, since the cohort-specific sample sizes are extremely small against sample sizes used in present-day research, results have to be interpreted with caution. Results concerning the evolution of intragenerational lifetime earnings inequality differ between men and women. Results for men indicate that no clear increasing or decreasing trend can be declared over the evolution of intragenerational lifetime earnings inequality. However, the Gini coefficients of lifetime earnings defined up-to age-39 suggest that the 1970 and 1975 cohorts are experiencing higher levels of inequality than the older cohorts born in the 1950s. Findings for women, in contrast, imply a decreasing trend in the evolution of intragenerational lifetime earnings inequality between successive cohorts. Based on the results, younger female cohorts are experiencing less intragenerational lifetime earnings inequality than older cohorts. Findings concerning the association between current and lifetime earnings demonstrate that annual and lifetime earnings are highly correlated between ages 40 and 50 for men. Likewise, annual and lifetime earnings are highly correlated between ages 45 and 55 for women. Annual earnings can be considered a good proxy for lifetime earnings between these age brackets for men and women respectively.
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(2022)Early literature focused solely on risk’s role in asset pricing. Involving liquidity helps explain unexplained observations from the market, such as, cross-section of assets with different liquidity, and relax some strong assumptions of standard general equilibrium asset pricing models, such as, frictionless markets, no arbitrage, agent optimality and equilibrium. Contrary to empirical evidence, implications of these assumptions would predict that securities with identical cash flows be priced equal. The simplest definition for liquidity is the ease of trading a security, though, in the LAPM and Kiyotaki—Moore-model, liquidity is defined the aggregate value of the ability to transfer wealth across time. Illiquidity stems from exogenous transaction costs, demand pressure, inventory risk, private information and search frictions. Illiquid assets are harder to sell and require a discount, which translates into higher interest compared to a more liquid asset or a higher price commanded by the more liquid asset ceteris paribus; this is the liquidity premium. The intertemporal CAPM predicts that an asset’s price is the expectation of the product of the asset’s payoff and consumer’s intertemporal marginal rate of substitution. The LAPM presents an alternative approach based on corporations’ desire to store liquidity in order to fulfill their future payments. Unlike most real business cycle models, which feature a borrowing constraint, the Kiyotaki—Moore-model features a resalability constraint that allows the model to price the level of liquidity and liquidity risk. The main difference between the models is the LAPM full state contingency, which is why there is no need for money to circulate.
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(2022)This thesis focuses on rational bubbles. Such bubbles belong to the indeterminacy school of economics, as they deviate economic models from equilibria determined by real economic factors. This topic is studied with an extensive literature review on theoretical and empirical research. Additionally, independent contributions provide new evidence and elaborate the topic further. The theoretical literature review begins afar to elaborate the classic Samuelson–Diamond–Tirolé model. However, this classical model is deterministic, dynamically inefficient and contractionary. Review of literature focus on models that overcome these three weaknesses. Particularly models with financial frictions are given much emphasis. Rational bubbles are explored better in the framework of a Martin–Ventura model. The Martin–Ventura model is similar to the classic model, but it overcomes classical weaknesses with stochasticity and financial frictions. This model is examined in close detail and simulated to show how rational bubbles can have both expansionary and contractionary effects in the Martin-Ventura model. Bubble detection is an inseparable part of bubble theory, and empirical literature review introduces different testing strategies. For example, variance bound, unit root, cointegration, instrument variable and switching-regime tests are discussed. However, many tests require data on many variables that are hard to observe, and nevertheless, the results are often ambiguous. The independent empirical work uses aggregate data of GDP, capital stock, consumption and wealth in the USA and Japan. The aggregate wealth is univariately tested for bubbles with the PSY test and autoregressive change in persistence tests. The multivariate real effects of prospective wealth bubbles are studied with vector autoregression. Similar univariate and multivariate approaches have been applied in other empirical studies, but in more specific setups. The literature review shows that rational bubbles are a diverse concept that is extendable to many models. Furthermore, such indeterminacies often improve the performance and plausibility of conventional (deterministic) models. The theoretical and empirical contributions are aligned and provide tentative bubble-supporting evidence in both countries. In light of the results, both economies, the USA and Japan, have accommodated economic bubbles during the last five decades.
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(2021)Urbanization is one of the megatrends of our time. Urbanization means that the cities have become more substantial and more critical economic centers. City population had an increasing trend both in Stockholm and Helsinki for the years 1990–2019. Migration has been one of the factors driving this urbanization process. Increased attractivity of the urban housing leads to an increased demand for urban housing which affects the urban housing market dynamics. Stockholm and Helsinki, as metropolitan cities, had an increasing trend to the real house prices of the old apartments for most of the years 2005–2019. The primary purpose of the study is to test whether excess migration explains the real house prices. Moreover, the role of the real income per person, the real interest rate, the new apartment construction, and the unemployment rate for the house prices is examined. House prices are linked to the household wealth and the private consumption. Besides, the house prices affect people’s ability to move into new areas for receiving a new job. In the empirical part, the house price determinants for the old apartments are examined by adapting a two-stage least squares model for the panel data from Stockholm and Helsinki for the years 2005–2019. Overall, the observation period comprises a timeframe of almost the two first decades of the millennium era starting from the aftermath of the Tech bubble. Furthermore, this period includes the global financial crisis in the year 2008 and European debt crisis that began in the year 2010. The adapted data of the house prices, excess migration, real income per person, the new completed apartments, and the unemployment rate are on the municipality level data. The real interest rates are computed from the national level data from Sweden and Finland, except for the 6 months EURIBOR that is data from the euro area level. The data is provided by Valueguard, Statistics Sweden, Statistics Finland, OECD, and the City of Helsinki. The empirical results strongly indicate that the real interest rate and the real income per person affect the house prices of the old apartments in Stockholm and Helsinki in the years 2005–2019. However, the empirical results do not give a statistically significant estimate to the role of the excess migration to explaining the house prices. Furthermore, the estimates for the new completed apartments and the unemployment rate are statistically insignificant that hampers the analysis of for these determinants as explanatory variables for the house prices. The empirical findings about the role of the real income affecting the house prices are in line with the previous findings from the Swedish and Finnish housing markets. Moreover, the previous findings from the Finnish housing markets support the finding of the real interest rate affecting the house prices. The empirical findings underline the importance of the availability of the macroprudential tools for preventing a possible overheating of the housing markets at the low interest rate environment. Furthermore, the findings highlight the need to closely monitor the household indebtedness and the share of the household income that is used to the loan instalments. Furthermore, the results lead to ask, whether the housing markets are capable of supporting migration to these cities from the areas where the real income level is smaller compared with Stockholm and Helsinki for taking a job.
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(2019)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.
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