Research

My research and policy briefs have been featured in both international (The Economist, Wired) and Finnish (e.g. YLE, Helsingin Sanomat) media outlets. In addition, I’ve presented my work at multiple academic conferences, as well as at the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment in Finland.

You can find a list of my research also on my Google Scholar profile.

Working Papers

New Evidence on the Effect of Technology on Employment and Skill Demand [link]
(with Aapo Stenhammar and Joonas Tuhkuri)
Under revision for the Quarterly Journal of Economics

Abstract: We present novel evidence on the effects of advanced technologies on employment, skill demand, and firm performance. The main finding is that advanced technologies led to increases in employment and no change in skill composition. Our main research design focuses on a technology subsidy program in Finland that induced sharp increases in technology investment in manufacturing firms. Our data directly measure multiple technologies and skills and track firms and workers over time. We demonstrate novel text analysis and machine learning methods to perform matching and to measure specific technological changes. To understand our findings, we outline a theoretical framework that contrasts two types of technological change: process versus product. We document that the firms used new technologies to produce new types of output rather than replace workers with technologies within the same type of production. The results contrast with the ideas that technologies necessarily replace workers or are skill biased.

Work in Progress

Business Development Grants in Disruptive Times
(with Otto Kässi and Olli Ropponen)

We analyze the effect of business development subsidies granted by Business Finland during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our main research design utilizes random assignment of cases to officials in constructing a judge leniency measure, which provides exogenous variation in the probability of receiving a subsidy. We focus on central firm-level outcomes, along with tracking the effects of the subsidies on incumbent workers.

Policy Briefs

Did Digitalization Increase the Resilience of Societies During the COVID-19 Pandemic? (in Finnish) [link]
(with Otto Kässi, Jyrki Ali-Yrkkö, and Mika Pajarinen). March 2023.

Are Global Value Chains Changing? (in Finnish) [link]
(with Jyrki Ali-Yrkkö and Mika Pajarinen). February 2023.

Policy Brief: New Evidence on the Effect of Technology on Employment and Skill Demand (in Finnish) [link]
(with Aapo Stenhammar and Joonas Tuhkuri). April 2022.

In Search of Upcoming Supply Chain Surprises: The World Export Market Shares of Belarus, Russia and Ukraine [link]
(with Jyrki Ali-Yrkkö and Petri Rouvinen). March 2022.

The Significance of Russia for Finnish Companies (in Finnish) [link]
(with Jyrki Ali-Yrkkö and Aki Kangasharju). March 2022.