This paper examines, through the use of plant-level data, whether R&D’s productivity impact is contingent on the distance of a plant’s productivity from the industry’s technological frontier. R&D is specified as an accumulated stock from R&D investments. We analyse the productivity effect...

This paper examines the relationship between relative income inequality and health in Finland, using individual microdata over the period 1993-2005. Our data allows us to analyse a large spectrum of health indicators. Overall, our results suggest that income inequality is not associated with...

This paper explores the potential role of adverse working conditions in the determination of workers’ sickness absences. Our data contain detailed information on the prevalence of job disamenities at the workplace from a representative sample of Finnish workers. The results from reduced-form...

We analyse the relationship between unemployment and self-assessed health using the European Community Household Panel (ECHP) for Finland over the period 1996-2001. Our results reveal that the event of becoming unemployed does not matter as such for self-assessed health. The health status of...

This paper analyses the flexibility of the Finnish labour markets from the microeconomic perspective by focusing on individual-level wage changes for job stayers. The study covers the private sector workers by using three separate data sets obtained from payroll records of employers’...

The paper examines the effect of top income shares on the crude death and infant mortality rates. We use balanced panel data that covers nine advanced countries over the period 1952-1998. Top income shares are measured as the shares of pre-tax income going to the richest 0.1%, 1% and 10% of the...

This paper examines the role of job satisfaction in the determination of establishment-level productivity. The matched data contain both information on job satisfaction from the ECHP (European Community Household Panel) and information on establishment productivity from longitudinal register...

This paper evaluates the labour market effects of the introduction of the polytechnic education system in Finland. The polytechnic reform gradually transformed former vocational colleges into polytechnics. Since the timing of the reform differed across schools, we can compare the performance of...

The paper examines the effect of innovative work practices on the prevalence of sickness absence and accidents at work. We focus on several different aspects of workplace innovations (self-managed teams, information sharing, employer-provided training and incentive pay) along with the...