Browsing by study line "Allmänna studieinriktningen"

The purpose of the thesis is to explore the link between labour markets and transportation accessibility. Accessibility has been estimated with logsum and travel times of public and private transportation. Logsum as a concept has been used in the transportation system estimation, all though all in all logsum as a measure of accessibility is not as established as travel times. This way the overview of the effects of accessibility to employment is thorough. I also evaluate how impact assessment of transportation is done historically and how wider economic impacts are considered in the framework. Cost-benefit analysis is widely used, but the framework should be improved on how to include wider economic impacts. The methods section goes through how transportation system estimation is done. The used data in the estimation is collected from three dependencies. These are the interview-based traveling habits from Helsingin Seudun Liikenne, Statistics Finland metropolitan regional employment statistics and travel times of public and private transportation from Helsinki Region Travel Time Matrix. In the results I go through the empirical model. Travel time, logsum and employment are all viewed as an elasticity measure. The results of the model are reasonable and in line with the previous literature, but the coefficient of determination ends up quite low. This means that the results still need confirmation, either through better data or better estimation model. My results can be viewed as a preliminary result on the link between employment and accessibility.

This thesis investigates the tax base and allocation choices in international corporate income tax architecture and provides an evaluation of the effects of the choices made in three different systems: the current system, residual profit allocation, and OECD Pillar One. International corporate income tax design has a significant effect on the functioning of the international economy and on the welfare of individuals. Thus, making the correct design choices is extremely important. This thesis argues that the international corporate income tax system should be designed following certain important principles of taxation: 1) fairness, 2) economic efficiency, 3) robustness to avoidance, 4) administrative ease, and 5) incentive compatibility. The different systems are then introduced in turn and evaluated against these criteria. The thesis finds that the current system suffers from certain conceptual weaknesses that leave significant room for improvement with regards to the set criteria. It is further argued that a reform is required for the continued functioning of the international system. Such a reform could be introduced in the form of residual profit allocation. OECD Pillar One proposal involves elements of residual profit allocation, but in comparing the different systems with each other, this thesis argues that the OECD proposal is too narrow in scope to gain the full benefits of a residual profit allocation system.

Asymmetric information in insurance markets is the result of policyholders, the buyers of insurance, having more information about their own risk types and preferences than the insurer. Informational asymmetry between the insurer and policyholders can lead to non-optimal insurance prices and quantities which reduce market efficiency. While the presence of asymmetric information has been widely studied in several insurance markets, it has not been empirically studied in the Finnish automobile insurance market before. This thesis aims to fill this gap in literature. The Finnish automobile insurance market consists of two types of insurance. Motor liability insurance is required by law from all vehicles used for driving in traffic. Also, voluntary automobile insurance can be acquired in addition to the mandatory motor liability insurance. In this thesis, the presence of asymmetric information is studied by comparing the occurrence of motor liability insurance claims, conditioned with the pricing variables used by the insurer, between policyholders who only have a motor liability insurance policy and policyholders with an additional automobile insurance policy. The data set used in this thesis is from a single Finnish insurance company. The data set is from the year 2019 and it contains nearly 105,000 motor liability insurance policies. The data include all variables observed by the insurer. Several regression specifications and the widely used positive correlation test are used in this thesis to study the correlation between insurance coverage and motor liability insurance claims. The results of this thesis suggest that signs of asymmetric information are not present at aggregate level in the Finnish automobile insurance market in question. However, different subgroups of policyholders show signs of asymmetric information: After controlling for the pricing variables, policyholders with an automobile insurance policy with the largest coverage show a positive correlation between buying automobile insurance and motor liability insurance claims whereas policyholders with an automobile insurance policy with the third largest coverage show a negative coverage-claims correlation. However, the results from different regression specifications regarding different automobile insurance coverages were not unanimous and thus the results are left ambiguous. In addition, new policyholders considered as experienced drivers show a negative correlation between motor liability insurance claims and having automobile insurance coverage. On the contrary, policyholders considered as experienced drivers with 1–2 years of company experience do not show signs of asymmetric information. The result suggests that the insurer learns from its repeat customers as signs of informational asymmetry disappear over time. Moreover, policyholders considered as unexperienced drivers do not show signs of asymmetric information regardless of the length of their customership in the firm. The results are in line with previous research.

The determinants of FDI have been a topic of interest in economics since the 1980s and this paper aims to contribute to this field. This study aims to measure how associated FDI is with the political risk as well as to see the extent of this relationship in Turkey in the years 1996–2017. The political risk is measured as a change in indexes that are provided by the World Bank, Freedom House, and Transparency International. These political indicators are Political Rights, Civil Liberties, the Corruption Perceptions Index, Regulatory Quality, Voice and Accountability, Rule of Law, Government Effectiveness, Control of Corruption, and Political Stability. The earlier literature on FDI and political risks is mostly empirical and there has not been much theoretical research. Chakrabarti analyzed the past studies on FDI and its determinants in 2001 and found out that in the earlier research, almost every explanatory variable of FDI except the market size was sensitive to small changes in the conditioning information set, casting doubt on the robustness of the results. There have also been conducted studies that address political risk or equivalent concepts. The 2005 research of Busse and Hefeker had the same topic as this paper but their data consisted of many countries and they employed two different panel models. One was a fixed-effects panel analysis while the other utilized a generalized method of moments estimator. I selected three model specifications for the time-series regression analysis. All three specifications have market size as a control variable and the other two also have the economy’s growth rate and trade openness. The third has the inflation rate as the final control variable. The data have a small number of observations which limits the options available for the empirical part of the study. Out of the nine political indicators, Regulatory Quality is the only political indicator that is not associated with FDI, while the results on the Corruption Perceptions Index and Control of Corruption are inconclusive. The rest six are associated with FDI. The Rule of Law index has the highest estimated coefficient value of the World Bank indicators and the Political Rights index has the highest estimated coefficient value of the Freedom House’s indicators.

High growth enterprises are important contributors to the aggregate economy but not much is known of their dynamics. Based on previous literature it is quite clear that their growth is usually not very persistent. The purpose of this study is to find the enterprise characteristics that positively affect the length of the growth period. In this study, extensive micro data from Statistics Finland is used. The data comprises of information from business register, financial statements, foreign trade, ownership and employee registers. Survival analysis methods are used to get information on the effects of different enterprise characteristic. The models account for the time-varying nature of the covariates and the coefficients. Based on the results, it is found that many of the characteristics have time-varying effects and the effects are not the same for all size classes of enterprises. It is quite clear though that access to foreign markets and innovativeness are important positive factors to the length of the growth period whereas size and age have negative effects. Survival analysis methods seem to fit quite well to this framework and they seem to produce robust results.

This thesis aims to answer the question of whether monetary policy influences stock prices in the United Kingdom and Finland. These countries have been chosen due to their economic differences. The United Kingdom is an open relatively large economy with an independent monetary policy set by the Bank of England. Finland, on the other hand is a small open economy, and it is part of a monetary union called Eurozone. Hence, the monetary decisions are made by the European Central Bank for all the members of the union. The research is conducted for the time period of 15 years (2003-2018) with monthly time-series data. The method used in the thesis is the structural vector autoregression model which allows for solving the endogeneity issue through imposing restrictions on the structure of the model. Hence, short-run restrictions and long-run monetary neutrality are applied to the model. The model is analysed using the estimation as well as impulse response functions. In order to consider the macroeconomic environment, variables such as inflation, commodity prices, and industrial production are used in the model. Moreover, a dummy variable is used to account for the financial crisis of 2008. The results of the structural vector autoregression estimation show there to be a statistically significant negative effect of monetary policy on stock prices for both countries. The impulse responses show that as contractionary monetary policy is implemented, stock prices tend to decrease. Contrarily, expansionary monetary policy results in an increase of stock prices. The effect of a monetary policy shock is larger on the stock prices and dissipates quicker in the United Kingdom. For Finland, the effect is minor, and it takes longer to dissipate. However, the effect is statistically significant for both countries

It has lately become a common practice among national authorities with macroeconomic mandates to build large Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) models to assist in forecasting and policy analysis. The Finnish Ministry of Finance has also developed a small open economy New Keynesian DSGE model, “KOOMA”. As DSGE models try to emulate the key features and dynamics of the economy, the crucial question is, how well do they function in accordance with reality? An answer to this question can be searched by using Structural Vector Autoregression (SVAR) models, which are natural econometric counterparts to DSGE models and are better suited for analyzing data. The aim of this study is to evaluate the calibration of KOOMA with a SVAR model, which is identified with sign restrictions. I compare impulse response functions from the SVAR model, which are found both statistically significant and robust to changes in model specifications, to the equivalent impulse response functions from KOOMA. The findings suggest, that KOOMA generally produce impulse responses with same signs as the SVAR model, but there are some differences in the magnitudes and persistence of the responses.

In Finland, entrepreneurs (both employers and self-employed) are, compared to salaried employees, free to increase their compulsory retirement insurance contributions to the public pension fund; this being an alternative to additional saving for retirement in private pension funds. This thesis seeks to identify and further examine factors which supposedly influence entrepreneurs‘ perceived sufficiency of their retirement insurance payments . The purpose is to subsequently recommend retirement policy designs which would incentivize Finnish entrepreneurs to increase their contributions to the public pension fund. The empirical section of this work was conducted on a sample of 2 294 entrepreneurs (1 533 self-employed and 761 employers) who took part in the 2017 Labor Force Ad hoc Survey on Entrepreneurship carried out by Statistics Finland. The initial hypotheses gave rise to four categories of variables, presumably affecting sufficiency of retirement insurance contributions perceived by the study sample; namely, ’Personal characteristics & Business background’, ’Motivation’, ’Future perspectives’ and ’Job satisfaction & excitement’. The obtained results suggest that the majority of the selected variables have an effect on entrepreneurs’ perceived sufficiency of their pension insurance contributions. Besides, the factors identified as negatively affecting the perceived sufficiency of retirement insurance payments were more frequently present in the group of self-employed compared to the group of entrepreneurs (employers). Therefore, it is expected that the self-employed are more prone to pay themselves insufficient pension insurance contributions. However, all these factors are considered as incorrigible since they stem from the very nature of complex human behaviour. In this sense, the behavioural approach seems to be highly relevant when forming retirement insurance policies seeking to encourage prudent saving behaviour. This study applies an alternative approach of behavioural economics to the problematics of retirement saving. The first part of the thesis outlines foundations of behavioural economics which serve as a theoretical background for further analyses. For instance, propositions of procrastination, self-control and mental accounting are discussed.

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.

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.