ETLA – Research Institute of the Finnish Economy

Finland

ETLA, Elinkeinoelaemaen Tutkimuslaitoksen Kannatusyhdistys R.Y. is the leading private economic research organisation in Finland. Since being established in 1946, ETLA has been quick to apply new methods and approaches to shed light on current economic issues. From early on, ETLA has charted the effect of education and research on productivity and growth.

In the 1990’s ETLA contributed significantly to the revamping of Finland’s industrial policy on the basis of identified industrial clusters. Also economics of ageing has been studied now 20 years. Currently ETLA employs some 30 researchers in its three research programmes and a forecasting unit. The research programmes are engaged in business economics research, labour market and education

economics research, and public finance and economic policy research. About two thirds of ETLA’s researchers have a doctor’s degree. ETLA has broad-based experience from thematic coordination of EU collaborative projects as well as from partnership in EU research projects and coordinating actions.

Key personnel involved in the project

Tarmo Valkonen, senior researcher, leader of Economic consequences of ageing
Juha Alho, senior researcher
Jukka Lassila, senior researcher
Niku Määttänen, senior researcher
Eija Kauppi, systems designer
Main tasks attributed to them in the project

ETLA leads Economic consequences of ageing. It contributes to this WP also by reviewing the literature of the economic consequences of population ageing and by studying the interaction of changing household structure, longer lifetimes, economic decisions of households and policies aiming to support labour supply. ETLA participates also to Pension systems, savings and financial education, where it analyses the interaction of pension system rules, longer lifetimes and retirement. In Social support and long term care ETLA contributes by studying the opportunity costs and choices of a person near retirement age, who needs to use time for informal care and considers thus whether to retire and which route out of employment one should choose.

Short profile of all personnel and previous relevant experience

Tarmo Valkonen

Research Director at ETLA, Dr.Sc.(Econ.). His research interests include public economics, especially model-based policy analysis. He has extensive experience in international research projects. He has published in International Tax and Public Finance, Journal of Pension Economics and Finance, Empirica and several academic books. Tarmo Valkonen leads the Economic consequences of ageing and participates in model building, policy design and simulations and interpretation of the results in Economic consequences of ageing.

Juha Alho

Professor of Statistics at the University of Eastern Finland. He has published extensively in the area of assessing and modeling of uncertainty in population forecasting. The book “Statistical Demography and Forecasting” (joint with B.D. Spencer) was published by Springer in 2005. He was a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences Panel of Population Projections (results published in the book “Beyond Six Billion”). Juha Alho has two main tasks in Economic consequences of ageing. He participates in the generation of stochastic household projections for selected European countries and studies whether the men’s and women’s mortality rates are converging in the future.

Niku Määttänen

Research supervisor at ETLA, Ph.D. (Econ.). He received his PhD from the University of Pompeu Fabra in 2004. His research interests include public economics and macroeconomics. He has published articles in journals such as Journal of Public Economic Theory, Studies in nonlinear Dynamics and Econometrics and International Journal of Industrial Organization. Niku Määttänen participates in model building, policy design and simulations and interpretation of the results in Economic consequences of ageing, Pension systems, savings and financial education and Social support and long term care.

Jukka Lassila

Research Advisor at ETLA, Adjunct Professor at the Department of Politics and Economics at the University of Helsinki. Dr of science (Economics). He has coordinated several international research projects concerning population ageing and its economic consequences and policy implications, and is currently coordinating a Nordic project ”Ageing Households and the Nordic Welfare Model”. He has published articles in journals such as Money, Credit, and Banking, International Tax and Public Finance, Labour Economics, and Journal of Pension Economics and Finance, and in books by NBER and the World Bank. He is co-editor of Pension Policies and Public Debt in Dynamic CGE Models (Physica-Verlag, 1997) and Uncertain Demographics and Fiscal Sustainability (Cambridge University Press, 2008). Jukka Lassila participates in reviewing the literature of the economic consequences of population ageing and in model building, policy design and simulations and interpretation of the results in Economic consequences of ageing.

Eija Kauppi

Systems Designer at ETLA. She has long experience in building, calibrating and simulating numerical overlapping models and reporting of the results. Eija Kauppi contributes to Economic consequences of ageing, Pension systems, savings and financial education and Social support and long term care as a modeller.

ELTA website