FIT is involved in strengthening public economics education in Africa. A new public economics curriculum provides African universities with locally grounded teaching materials and open-access resources. The initiative by VATT, HAUS, TaxDev, UNU-WIDER in collaboration with the University of Nairobi and eight other African universities will deliver a full set of materials designed to make public economics teaching more relevant to African policy and research contexts.
Almost 70 economists from across Europe gathered in Helsinki on 21–22 August 2025 for the third Workshop in Labor Economics: Wages, Employment and Inequality (WEI 2025). The two-day event featured keynote lectures by Stephen Machin (LSE) and Magne Mogstad (University of Chicago), alongside a rich programme of sessions and flash talks presenting recent research. Discussions focused on wages, employment, and inequality, with lively exchanges between senior and early-career researchers underscoring the workshop’s reputation as one of the high-quality forums in labor economics in Europe.
Kimmo Palanne defends his dissertation, Essays on Transportation and the Environment, at Aalto University on March 21, 2025. The research indicates that lowering public transport fares in the Helsinki metropolitan area reduced car use and CO2 emissions. However, the measure was expensive in terms of cost per tonne of CO2 reduced compared to other climate actions.
FIT is inviting proposals for applications to the EU-funded Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions program!
Are you a postdoc with high ambitions, working on topics connected to FIT research, and interested in joining our team through the program? Send us a brief proposal for an application to the program by 23rd April!
The Uppsala Center for Fiscal Studies (UCFS) and the Finnish Centre of Excellence in Tax Systems Research (FIT) invite you to a workshop for doctoral students interested in topics of “Firms and Public Policy”.
Only a small fraction of retail trade companies opted to pay newly hired workers under the age of 25 subminimum wages, after policy change. This finding suggests that prevailing wage norms significantly influence firms’ wage setting.
On September 13, 2024 Kwabena Adu-Ababio defended his doctoral dissertation “Essays on Social Assistance and Tax Administration in Selected Developing Economies” at University of Helsinki. The essays in the field of development and public economics discuss issues related to fiscal policy, and how households and firms are affected depending on the policy at play in emerging economies.
The Finnish Centre of Excellence in Tax Systems Research (FIT) has a strong presence in the 80th Annual Congress of the International Institute of Public Finance in Prague on 21-23 August 2024. FIT researchers have contributed to 23 high quality research papers presented at the conference.
