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Take part in the anonymous survey on consumers’ grocery shopping preferences!

M.Sc (Econ.) Marika Viertola defends her dissertation on corporate taxation at Aalto University School of Business, Department of Economics, on September, 22.

The dissertation provides new insights into the behavior of Nordic and Finnish multinational enterprises and into the effects that tax policy measures may have on profit shifting and what kind of other implications the policies may have.

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.

M.Sc.Econ., MA Satu Metsälampi will defend her doctoral research ”Essays on behavioral public economics” at University of Turku on May, 30.

The essays discuss the consequences of social preferences.

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.

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.

According to a recent study, Finnish Home Care Allowance has negative effects especially on mothers as well as children. The effects are due to the nature of Home Care Allowance: it not only is a transfer of income but also guides the parents’ decisions to remain home with their children for longer periods, reducing their employment.

The study contributes to the existing literature on the matter by considering the effects of Finnish home care allowance program on long-term working careers, in addition to the short-term effects. The study contributes by looking at both short- and medium-term outcomes on mothers and children in the same institutional setting. Finally, the data from child health clinics on children are unique and have not been used in prior research.

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.

More Finns annually emigrate from the country than return to it. In this article, we will use economic research and comprehensive new data to evaluate the impact of taxation on international migration, assess the situation in Finland and reflect on the policy implications.

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”.

The deadline for registration is 16 March 2025!

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.