European University Institute Library

Essays in applied economics, Tuomo Virkola

eng

This thesis consists of three articles in applied economics. In the first essay, I consider the extent to which informational frictions between workers and jobs can be alleviated with short-term contracts in the early career. I leverage a program at a Finnish university which gave out randomly selected students an internship subsidy for a three-month paid internship. I match these students to administrative data to track their transition to labor markets in the years around the program and find evidence that the program significantly improved early labor market success. In the second essay, I study the effect of social sorting on family formation and inequality across households. I leverage the institutional features of Finnish high-school assignments to evaluate how exposure to highskilled, high-socioeconomic -status peers affect the quality of social ties individuals form. I find that while high schools are an important meeting place for future spouses, but that exposure to higher quality peers will not affect the eventual partner characteristics. This suggests that policies aiming to mix individuals from various backgrounds may not always work anticipated. In the third essay, I study with two co-authors the causes and consequences of broadly defined inequality and democratization using Finland as a natural experiment. We find evidence that the 19th famine affected inequality and labour coercion and thus the balance of political power. On the other hand, we find that these developments were critical in explaining both the increasing threat of revolution and participation in the Finnish civil war in the early 20th century and a subsequent shift to democratization. Areas that initially experienced higher growth in inequality, also experienced the most significant shift to redistribution in the aftermath of the war

Includes bibliographical references ( pages 97-103)

Thesis (Ph. D.)--European University Institute (ECO), 2021.

illustrations

no index present

non fiction

Essays in applied economics

theses

1252657522

Defence date: 29 January 2021

Tuomo Virkola

EUI PhD thesesEUI theses