The first task of the project is to establish a comprehensive picture of the changes having occurred in occupational structures, and to also unravel major development trends behind these changes. This work utilizes approaches recently suggested by, inter alia, Thomas Lemieux and, in so doing, uses for the most part matched employee–employer data gathered by the Confederation of Finnish Industries EK.

The second task relates to examining – at the company and industry levels – the effect of worker flows and workforce re-structuring on the development of wage levels and the role of the business-cycle component in this context using so-called decomposition methods.

The third and final task sets out to investigate to what extent changing industry structures show up in changing labour-input quality and, ultimately, in the wage development and productivity of industries using so-called growth-accounting methods. Both the second and the third task will utilize wage structure data compiled by Statistics Finland.

The project is funded by The Finnish Work Environment Fund and it lasts from January 2011 to the end of 2012. ETLA’s researchers involved in the project are Dr. Rita Asplund (lead researcher), Dr. Antti Kauhanen, Dr. Mika Maliranta, and M. Sc. Pekka Vanhala.

The main research questions are: How do the features of incentive plans affect their productivity effects? Have the incentive plans changed in Finland in recent years? How and why do incentive pay lead to distortions?

The project co-ordinator is Dr. Antti Kauhanen. The project is funded by Tekes (the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation) and it is scheduled to run from 1 March 2011 to 28 February 2013.

The project is financed by Service Sector Employers PALTA. It is carried out during 2012 by Rita Asplund, Antti Kauhanen and Pekka Vanhala.

While the emphasis is on school-to-work transitions, including early career experience, attempts will also be made to assess the role of possible reconnections of young people to education (e.g. to complete a diploma), as well as of other measures, notably active labour policy measures (ALPMs), directed towards unemployed or inactive youth. Of particular interest in this context is apprenticeship training in general and apprenticeship contracts for low-skilled youth in particular. In so doing, the project can be expected to provide comprehensive new research-based evidence on the youth unemployment problems in the Nordic countries in support of policy-making within the fields of both education and labour markets.

The project is funded by Nordic Council of Ministers and its duration is from 1 September 2011 to 31 August 2013. ETLA’s researchers involved in the project are Dr. Rita Asplund (lead researcher) and M. Sc. Pekka Vanhala.

Project homepage

The first part of the project analyzes the present-day and future productivity of the service sector from the point-of-view of the whole society. The second part carries out studies in individual organizations. These organization-specific studies focus on the determinants of productivity in both private and public services.

The project co-ordinator is Dr. Antti Kauhanen. The project is funded by Tekes (the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation) and the Technology Industries of Finland Centennial Foundation. It is scheduled to run from 1 February 2011 to 31 December 2013.

The project’s home page.

By adopting this approach, we make the following three contributions to the literature. First, we present some of the first analyses of the interplay between within-firm careers and job mobility. This is a significant open question that has recently started to receive attention in the theoretical literature. Second, we empirically distinguish among various theoretical models of promotions. There are many competing models of promotions, but empirical work has not been able to distinguish among these theoretical models. We apply a recent empirical framework to fill this gap. Third, we address entirely new questions, such as the long-term consequences of promotions and demotions.

The project is financed by the Academy of Finland and it runs from 1 September 2012 to 31 August 2016. The project co-ordinator is Dr. Antti Kauhanen.