Rita Asplund

Labour-market polarization is characterized by increased employment in occupations at the top but also at the bottom of the skills and wage distributions, followed by a relative decline in ‘middling’ occupations. This paper documents a polarization trend also in the Nordic labour markets and contrasts it to comparative findings for the USA. Employment growth in […]

This paper compares the effects of intangible capital on wage formation among white-collar manufacturing workers using comparative data from three European countries : the Czech Republic, Finland and Norway. The analysis is undertaken in two steps. First, we explore the wage differentials and the underlying sources for two occupation groups : innovation and non-innovation workers. […]

The paper compares the gender wage differentials of two occupation groups – innovation and non-innovation workers – separately for manufacturing and services using Finnish private-sector data. We apply a decomposition method based on unconditional quantile regression techniques to identify key factors underlying the gender wage gaps observed along the whole wage distribution, as well as […]

We study how upgrading the skills of the personnel affects a firm’s performance. Two different strategies are examined : 1) providing formal training and 2) strategic recruitment and separation policy. The use of register-based longitudinal employer-employee data supplemented with a survey on vocational training provides an opportunity to shed fresh light on the issue and […]

This paper provides a brief overview of the Finnish wage bargaining system and its evolution over the past decades into its current mode by drawing on existing documents, reports and analyses. The emphasis is on the changes having occurred in the system’s over-all structure as well as in its main content. Finally attempts are made, […]