For students:

Public Economics

  • What is the right level of tax progression?
  • What are the consequences of basic income?
  • How should universities be financed?
  • What is the right way to support poor people?
  • How should the pension system be financed?
Data visualization

Public economics provides a framework for thinking about the planner’s or the government’s intervention to the market. To this end, microeconomic models are used to assess how various market failures, inefficiencies, and inequalities can be corrected.

Much of modern public economics is related to inequality. The market economy does not necessarily produce a socially desirable distribution of income, and government intervention is again needed. Public economics research can inform policy discussion about the impacts of inequalities, how effective public policies are in reducing them, and how policymakers can address possible tradeoffs between economic efficiency and distributional equity.

At the core of public economic analysis are various policy measures, including taxes, provision of public goods, and regulatory actions. Research in contemporary public economics is increasingly empirical.  Impact evaluation methods and sufficient statistics approaches are used to attempt to credibly estimate the impact of policy instruments and reforms on taxpayer and individual behavior.

For Master's students interested in these topics, here is a list of recommended courses.

University of Helsinki and VATT Institute for Economic Research are part of the Finnish Centre of Excellence in Tax Systems Research, led by Professor Kaisa Kotakorpi of Tampere University.

Chair

  • Jukka Pirttilä

    Deputy Academic Director of Helsinki GSE, Professor @ University of Helsinki

Members

PhD Students

  • Isabel Hovdahl

    NHH

    Charging the Transition: Energy Storage Innovation and Climate Policy

    • Environmental Economics
    • Seminar

  • Giacomo Lo Conte

    University College Dublin

    Exposure to innovation and labor market dynamics: Evidence from the German manufacturing sectors

    • VATT
    • Job Talk

  • Gianluca Antonecchia

    University of Milan-Bicocca

    Bargaining Power and Quantity Discounts to Retailers: Evidence from India’s Pharmaceutical Industry

    • Industrial Organization
    • Seminar

  • Maija Kaartinen

    IIES

    Carbon Pricing and Fuel Switching by Firms: Theory and Evidence (with Ossian Prane)

    • Macroeconomics
    • Seminar

  • Aspasia Bizopoulou

    VATT

    Pay Transparency, Wage Setting and Worker Sorting (with Tuomo Virkola and Elias Einiö)

    • VATT
    • Seminar

  • Javier Feinman

    PSE

    The content of this event has not been announced yet. Please check back later.

    • Development Economics
    • Seminar

  • Marten Ritterrath

    University of Cologne

    Inventors’ Personal Experience of Natural Disasters and Green Innovation

    • VATT
    • Job Talk

  • Regi Kusumaatmadja

    VU Amsterdam

    Internal and External R&D: An analysis of costs and benefits

    • VATT
    • Job Talk

  • Ana Costa-Ramón

    University of Zurich

    The Long-Run Effects of a School Anti-Bullying Intervention (with Tabea Braun, Ana Rodríguez-González, Ursina Schaede, and Christina Salmivalli)

    • Labor & Public Economics
    • Seminar

  • Joakim Wikström

    Aalto University

    Do Patents Tilt Standard-Setting? Evidence from Cellular Networks

    • Industrial Organization
    • PhD Seminar

  • CEPR VIOS SEMINAR

    Jiekai Zhang (University of Southampton)

    Broadcasting of an online seminar: Enviromental impacts of banning vehicle advertising

    • Industrial Organization
    • CEPR VIOS Seminar

  • César Barilla

    University of Oxford

    The content of this event has not been announced yet. Please check back later.

    • Microeconomics
    • Seminar

  • Jerry Montonen

    Aalto University

    Shaping Young Minds: The Effects of Teachers on Social Skills

    • Labor & Public Economics
    • PhD Seminar

  • Joosua Virtanen

    Hanken School of Economics

    Joosua Virtanen will defend his thesis Essays on microeconomic prediction problems: with applications to firm growth and public procurement

    • Hanken
    • Doctoral Defence

  • Marta Morazzoni

    UCL

    The content of this event has not been announced yet. Please check back later.

    • Macroeconomics
    • Seminar

  • Evan Friedman

    Paris School of Economics

    Deception Aversion

    • Behavioral Economics
    • Seminar

  • Joakim Wikström

    Aalto University

    Do Patents Tilt Standard-Setting? Evidence from Cellular Networks

    • VATT
    • Job Talk

  • Oliver Snellman

    University of Helsinki

    Oliver Snellman will defend his thesis Transformer Network for Macroeconometric Analysis

    • University of Helsinki
    • Doctoral Defence

  • Sander Ramboer

    VATT

    The content of this event has not been announced yet. Please check back later.

    • VATT
    • Seminar

  • Milla Hägg

    University of Helsinki

    The content of this event has not been announced yet. Please check back later.

    • Practice Job Talk

  • Majken Stenberg

    Uppsala University

    The content of this event has not been announced yet. Please check back later.

    • Trade, Regional and Urban Economics
    • Seminar

  • Ville Savolainen

    Aalto University

    Cryptocurrency Pricing: An Exactly Solved Model with Endogenous Crashes

    • Practice Job Talk

  • Jaqueline Adelowo

    Politecnico di Torino

    The content of this event has not been announced yet. Please check back later.

    • Environmental Economics
    • Seminar

  • Julien Grenet

    PSE

    Social Diversity at School: Evidence from a French Desegregation Experiment (with Ghazala Azmat, Élise Huillery, Youssef Souidi, and Yann Algan)

    • Economics of Education (Educa)
    • Seminar

  • Luise Eisfeld

    University of Lausanne

    The content of this event has not been announced yet. Please check back later.

    • Industrial Organization
    • Seminar

  • Xiyu Jiao

    University of Gothenburg

    The content of this event has not been announced yet. Please check back later.

    • Econometrics
    • Seminar

  • Heikki Korpela

    University of Helsinki

    Heikki Korpela will defend his thesis Essays in Economics of Unemployment

    • University of Helsinki
    • Doctoral Defence

  • Kostas Matakos

    King's College London

    The content of this event has not been announced yet. Please check back later.

    • VATT
    • Seminar

  • Kevin Sheedy

    University of Cambridge

    The content of this event has not been announced yet. Please check back later.

    • Colloquium

  • Arnaldur Stefanson

    University of Iceland

    The content of this event has not been announced yet. Please check back later.

    • Labor & Public Economics
    • Seminar

  • CEPR VIOS SEMINAR

    Amanda Starc (Northwestern)

    Broadcasting of an online seminar: Painful Bargaining: Evidence from Anesthesia Rollups

    • Industrial Organization
    • CEPR VIOS Seminar

  • Lauri Esala

    University of Edinburgh

    The content of this event has not been announced yet. Please check back later.

    • Macroeconomics
    • Seminar

  • Saara Haikonen

    University of Helsinki

    TBA

    • Labor & Public Economics
    • PhD Seminar

  • Mikael Mäkimattila

    Aalto University

    The content of this event has not been announced yet. Please check back later.

    • Practice Job Talk

  • William Odgen

    Aalto University

    Estimating Transaction Frictions in Car Choice

    • Environmental Economics
    • Seminar

  • Camilla Christensen

    University of Copenhagen, CEBI and CenTax

    The content of this event has not been announced yet. Please check back later.

    • Labor & Public Economics
    • Seminar

  • Tuuli Tähtinen

    IFO

    The content of this event has not been announced yet. Please check back later.

    • Labor & Public Economics
    • Seminar

  • Tuomas Kaariaho

    University of Helsinki

    Firm responses to the energy crisis

    • Environmental Economics
    • Seminar

  • Toan Le

    University of Oxford

    The content of this event has not been announced yet. Please check back later.

    • Microeconomics
    • Seminar

  • Dionissi Aliprantis

    École Normale Supérieure (ENS) de Lyon

    The content of this event has not been announced yet. Please check back later.

    • Trade, Regional and Urban Economics
    • Seminar

  • Giacomo Brusco

    University of Tübingen

    The content of this event has not been announced yet. Please check back later.

    • Labor & Public Economics
    • Seminar

  • Francesco Vona

    University of Milan and FEEM

    The content of this event has not been announced yet. Please check back later.

    • Environmental Economics
    • Seminar

  • Nagore Iriberri

    University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU

    The content of this event has not been announced yet. Please check back later.

    • Economics of Education (Educa)
    • Seminar

  • Mateus Mysliwski

    NHH

    The content of this event has not been announced yet. Please check back later.

    • Industrial Organization
    • Seminar

  • Marta Santamaria

    University of Warwick

    The content of this event has not been announced yet. Please check back later.

    • Trade, Regional and Urban Economics
    • Seminar

  • Amit Dekel

    Aix-Marseille School of Economics

    The content of this event has not been announced yet. Please check back later.

    • Microeconomics
    • Seminar

  • Laura Khoury

    The content of this event has not been announced yet. Please check back later.

    • Labor & Public Economics
    • Seminar

  • Alessandro Pizzigolotto

    University of Copenhagen

    The content of this event has not been announced yet. Please check back later.

    • Labor & Public Economics
    • Seminar

  • Jakob Beuschlein

    Rockwool Foundation Berlin (RFBerlin) / the Berlin School of Economics / Humboldt University of Berlin

    The content of this event has not been announced yet. Please check back later.

    • Labor & Public Economics
    • Seminar

  • Thomas Douenne

    University of Amsterdam

    The content of this event has not been announced yet. Please check back later.

    • Environmental Economics
    • Seminar

  • Dirk Czarnitzki

    KU Leuven

    The content of this event has not been announced yet. Please check back later.

    • Industrial Organization
    • Seminar