There is plenty of evidence for market failures that motivate government intervention for innovation in general and research and development (R&D) in particular. R&D subsidies are a policy tool of major importance - both in theory and practice. The empirical evidence for the effectiveness of R&D...

This article first reviews the economic rationales for innovation policy. It then describes the Finnish innovation policy and policy making environment. The Finnish policy is evaluated from the point of view of fostering entrepreneurship. R&D subsidies, the main tool of Finnish innovation...

A key input to inventive activity is human capital. Hence it is important to understand the monetary incentives of inventors. We estimate the effect of patented inventions on individual earnings by linking data on U.S. patents and their inventors to Finnish employer-employee data. Returns are...

Whether or not banks are engaged in ex ante monitoring of customers may have important consequences for the whole economy.We approach this question via a model in which banks can invest in either information acquisition or market power (product differentiation). The two alternatives generate...

We study a financial market adverse selection model where all agents are endowed with initial wealth and choose to invest as entrepreneurs or financiers, or not to invest.We show that often a lack of outside finance leads to the emergence of financial markets where availability of outside...

This paper studies the welfare effects of R&D subsidies. We develop a model of continuous optimal treatment with outcome heterogeneity where the treatment outcome depends on applicant investment. The model takes into account heterogeneous application costs and identifies the treatment effect on...

We extend the theoretical basis of the empirical literature on the effects of R&D subsidies by providing an estimable model of strategic interaction among subsidy applicants, and public and private sector R&D financiers. Our model incorporates fixed R&D costs and a cost of external finance. We...

We conduct a welfare analysis of R&D subsidies and tax credits using a model of innovation policy in corporating externalities, limited R&D participation and finanial market imperfetions. We estimate the model using R&D projet level data from Finland. The optimal R&D tax credit rate (0.24) is...

We use elections data in which a large number of ties in vote counts between candidates are resolved via a lottery to study the personal incumbency advantage. We benchmark non-experimental regression discontinuity design (RDD) estimates against the estimate produced by this experiment that takes...

International student exchange has become an important part of university-level studies and the EU plans to increase it significantly. We analyze how international student exchange affects students' academic human capital. Using detailed student-level data from four faculties (Economics and...