Selaus asiasanan mukaan kokoelmassa VATT Working Papers

    • Are Voters Rational? 

      Lyytikäinen, Teemu; Tukiainen, Janne
      VATT Working Papers : 50 (Valtion taloudellinen tutkimuskeskus VATT, 27.09.2013)
      We test whether voters are rational in the sense that their decision to cast a vote depends on its expected impact on the election outcomes. We provide causal evidence on this rational voting hypothesis by using exogenous ...
    • Best Education Money Can Buy? Capitalization of School Quality in Finland 

      Saarimaa, Tuukka; Harjunen, Oskari; Kortelainen, Mika
      VATT Working Papers : 58 (Valtion taloudellinen tutkimuskeskus VATT, 05.12.2014)
      By international comparison, Finnish pupil achievement is high and school achievement differences small. The Finnish education system is unusual also because there are no national testing programs and information on school ...
    • Coalition formation and political decision making: Evidence from Finnish municipal mergers 

      Saarimaa, Tuukka; Tukiainen, Janne
      VATT Working Papers : 19 (Valtion taloudellinen tutkimuskeskus VATT, 20.12.2010)
      This paper analyzes empirically the coalition formation of local governments. We introduce a novel econometric strategy involving choice based sampling from a spatial network to allow for multi-partner mergers in our ...
    • Common Pool Problems in Voluntary Municipal Mergers 

      Saarimaa, Tuukka; Tukiainen, Janne
      VATT Working Papers : 53 (Valtion taloudellinen tutkimuskeskus VATT, 27.12.2013)
      We analyze free-riding behavior by Finnish municipalities prior to municipal mergers. The merger process creates a temporary common pool problem, which arises because of a delay from the initial merger decision to the ...
    • The (Displacement) Effects of Spatially Targeted Enterprise Initiatives: Evidence from UK LEGI 

      Einiö, Elias; Overman, Henry
      VATT Working Papers : 71 (Valtion taloudellinen tutkimuskeskus VATT, 07.03.2016)
      We investigate the impacts of a significant area-based intervention (LEGI) that aimed to increase employment and entrepreneurial activity in 30 disadvantaged areas across England. We examine the spatial pattern of effects ...
    • Do homeowners benefit urban neighborhoods? Evidence from housing prices 

      Saarimaa, Tuukka; Kortelainen, Mika
      VATT Working Papers : 36 (Valtion taloudellinen tutkimuskeskus VATT, 03.09.2012)
      Homeownership is heavily subsidized in many countries mainly through the tax code. The adverse effects of lenient tax treatment of owner-occupied housing on economic efficiency and growth are large and well documented in ...
    • Do Single-Party and Coalition Governments Differ in their Economic Outcomes? Evidence from Finnish Municipalities 

      Meriläinen, Jaakko
      VATT Working Papers : 51 (Valtion taloudellinen tutkimuskeskus VATT, 07.10.2013)
      Even though Finland has proportional elections, single-party control in Finnish local councils is not uncommon contrary to what one might expect. The largest party holds more than half of the seats in every third Finnish ...
    • Does Regression Discontinuity Design Work? Evidence from Random Election Outcomes 

      Hyytinen, Ari; Meriläinen, Jaakko; Saarimaa, Tuukka; Toivanen, Otto; Tukiainen, Janne
      VATT Working Papers : 59 (Valtion taloudellinen tutkimuskeskus VATT, 21.09.2015)
      We use elections data in which a large number of ties in vote counts between candidates are resolved via lottery. We benchmark non-experimental RDD estimates of personal incumbency advantage against the estimate produced ...
    • The impact of school closures on student achievement - evidence from rural Finland 

      Izadi, Ramin
      VATT Working Papers : 63 (Valtion taloudellinen tutkimuskeskus VATT, 05.06.2015)
      Over the last two decades, many municipalities in Finland have attempted to cut costs by closing small schools. In particular, rural schools with low enrolment have been the target of these savings. This continuing tendency ...
    • Local Representation and Strategic Voting: Evidence from Electoral Boundary Reforms 

      Tukiainen, Janne; Saarimaa, Tuukka
      VATT Working Papers : 64 (Valtion taloudellinen tutkimuskeskus VATT, 11.09.2015)
      We analyze whether voters value local political representation by exploiting municipal mergers, which increase the number of candidates available to voters and intensify political competition. In the Finnish open-list ...
    • One or Two Tiers of Local Government? – The Cost Effects of a Regional Experiment 

      Moisio, Antti; Hämäläinen, Kari
      VATT Working Papers : 65 (Valtion taloudellinen tutkimuskeskus VATT, 24.09.2015)
      This paper evaluates the cost effects of a Finnish regional self-government experiment. The experiment introduced a new intermediate tier of local administration that was given the responsibility to organize 60 per cent ...
    • Primary Effect in Open-List Elections 

      Meriläinen, Jaakko; Tukiainen, Janne
      VATT Working Papers : 79 (Valtion taloudellinen tutkimuskeskus VATT, 07.09.2016)
      We study how political parties select political leaders. Using regression discontinuity design and data from Finnish local elections, we find that parties use vote ranks to decide upon promotions. Moreover, we show that ...
    • Public Employees as Politicians: Evidence from Close Elections 

      Hyytinen, Ari; Meriläinen, Jaakko; Saarimaa, Tuukka; Toivanen, Otto; Tukiainen, Janne
      VATT Working Papers : 78 (Valtion taloudellinen tutkimuskeskus VATT, 27.09.2016)
      We analyze the effect of municipal employees' political representation in municipal councils on local public spending. To quantify the effect, we use within-party, as-good-as random variation in close elections in the ...
    • Regionalization and its effects in Finland – a regional AGE modelling analysis 

      Honkatukia, Juha; Kinnunen, Jouko; Ahokas, Jussi; Simola, Antti; Tamminen, Saara
      VATT Working Papers : 45 (VATT Institute for Economic ResearchValtion taloudellinen tutkimuskeskus VATT, 10.04.2013)
      Regional structural change is currently among the greatest challenges facing the public sector in many EU countries. In countries like Finland, where the public sectors have a large role in providing educational, health ...
    • Tax competition among local governments: evidence from a property tax reform in Finland 

      Lyytikäinen, Teemu
      VATT Working Papers : 26 (Valtion taloudellinen tutkimuskeskus VATT, 31.08.2011)
      This paper uses a Finnish policy intervention to study tax competition among local governments. Changes in the statutory lower limits to the property tax rates are used as a source of exogenous variation to estimate the ...