Finland
In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting economic contraction and government debt build-up, the government is formulating reforms to raise employment by 80 thousand workers by 2029. Finland’s employment rate has been lagging behind the Scandinavian Nordics, with most of the gap attributable to older workers, who have more favourable access to early retirement schemes than their Scandinavian counterparts. To restrict their use, extended unemployment benefit, which is paid to unemployed persons aged 61 or more after normal unemployment benefit expires until they retire or reach 65, should be phased out and non-medical conditions should no longer be taken into account for disability benefit applications of persons aged 60 or more. Activity rates for mothers of young children are also lower in Finland than in the Scandinavian Nordics mainly owing to Finland’s generous homecare allowance. It should be reduced and access to convenient early childhood education and care services expanded to improve mothers’ work incentives. By increasing mothers’ work experience at critical points in their careers, such a reform would also help to narrow Finland’s large gender wage gap. As part of its 2021 budget, the government is setting out labour market reforms to increase employment by 31 to 36 thousand workers. Such reforms should focus on promoting employment of older workers.
La pandémie de COVID-19 a plongé la Finlande dans une récession profonde, quoique moins sévère que dans la plupart des autres pays de l’OCDE. Le pays a réussi à juguler rapidement la première vague de la pandémie en conjuguant réductions volontaires de la mobilité et mesures d’endiguement prises à temps, et elle est en bonne voie pour faire face de la même manière à la deuxième vague. Néanmoins, les licenciements ont été nombreux, et les coûts budgétaires engagés pour soutenir les revenus des ménages et des entreprises sont considérables. Une fois la reprise engagée, des mesures d'assainissement substantielles seront nécessaires pour atteindre l’objectif des autorités consistant à résorber le déficit budgétaire structurel d’ici la fin de la décennie. Supprimer les mécanismes de retraite anticipée y contribuerait largement.
THÉMATIQUE : DÉVELOPPER L’EMPLOI
The Impact of Regulation on International Investment in Finland examines what drives FDI into Finland and which domestic regulatory aspects may discourage foreign investment. The report analyses trends in FDI flows towards Finland and other Nordic-Baltic countries and discusses the benefits of foreign investment for the Finnish economy. It provides a comparative overview of the regulatory frameworks in force in Finland and its Nordic-Baltic peers, outlining both economy-wide and sector-specific findings, and explores how changes in these regulatory frameworks are linked to changes in FDI inflows in the region. Foreign investors’ views on Finland’s business environment complement these findings. The report underlines potential areas for reform and suggests policy actions that could further improve Finland’s investment climate and contribute to attracting and retaining more FDI, while also strengthening its positive impact.
Public trust is a cornerstone of the Finnish administrative and political model, it has also been a key element of Finland's successful response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Preserving and strengthening the Finnish trust capital will be of essence for facing trade-offs and challenges ahead, particularly on the recovery phase following the pandemic. Through the combination of quantitative and qualitative methods this study examines the key determinants of trust in government, the local government and the public administration in Finland. Overall, it finds that responsiveness of public services and reliability of policies are key determinants of trust in institutions in Finland.
The Arctic is a vital region that helps preserve the balance of the global climate. The Arctic environment is particularly sensitive to short-lived climate pollutants, including black carbon, due to their strong warming effect. With ambitious policy action to reduce air pollutants, Arctic Council countries would obtain a positive effect on health and the environment throughout their territory, while also helping to slow down climate change by reducing emissions of black carbon. This report calls for ambitious policy action to reduce air pollution in Arctic Council countries, highlighting the environmental, health, and economic benefits from policy action.
This report proposes a taxonomy of policy design features for agri-environmental payment schemes, with a focus on those features that are conducive to policy cost-effectiveness. An application of the taxonomy to all agri-environmental payment schemes in six countries (Argentina, Australia, Estonia, Finland, Korea, and Portugal) reveals that more than 70% of 85 agri-environmental payment schemes have some of these key design features, including establishment of baselines; rates based on estimated or actual implementation costs; inspections and penalties; contract flexibility; and technical assistance. That said, at least 80% of the schemes could be improved, including by: use of cost-effectiveness criteria for selecting recipients; moving from supporting the adoption of specific practices to focusing on achievement of environmental outcomes; more regular policy evaluations; and comprehensive collection of information on policy characteristics. An in-depth application of the taxonomy to Korea illustrates the potential of this taxonomy for country policy monitoring and evaluation purposes.
This dataset contains data on metropolitan regions with demographic, labour, innovation and economic statistics by population, regional surface, population density, labour force, employment, unemployment, GDP, GDP per capita, PCT patent applications, and elderly dependency ratio.
The bulk of government investment is done at the local level in OECD countries, representing on average 41% of total public investment. Most studies on subnational government debt focus on the regional or state level, and very few studies analyse public investment specifically by local governments. This paper aims at filling this gap, presenting a framework to analyse the key factors, which affect the capacity of local governments to fund and finance public investment, and illustrates the framework with five case studies: Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Netherlands and New Zealand.
This dataset comprises statistics on different transactions and balances to get from the GDP to the net lending/borrowing. It includes national disposable income (gross and net), consumption of fixed capital as well as net savings. It also includes transaction components such as net current transfers and net capital transfers. Data are expressed in millions of national currency as well as US dollars and available in both current and constant prices. Data are provided from 1950 onwards.
Gross domestic product (GDP) is the standard measure of the value of final goods and services produced by a country during a period minus the value of imports. This subset of Aggregate National Accounts comprises comprehensive statistics on gross domestic product (GDP) by presenting the three different approaches of its measure of GDP: output based GDP, expenditure based GDP and income based GDP. These three different measures of gross domestic product (GDP) are further detailed by transactions whereby: the output approach includes gross value added at basic prices, taxes less subsidies, statistical discrepancy; the expenditure approach includes domestic demand, gross capital formation, external balance of goods and services; and the income approach includes variables such as compensation of employees, gross operating surplus, taxes and production and imports. Gross domestic product (GDP) data are measured in national currency and are available in current prices, constant prices and per capita starting from 1950 onwards.
This dataset contains tax revenue collected by Finland. It provides detailed tax revenues by sector (Supranational, Federal or Central Government, State or Lander Government, Local Government, and Social Security Funds) and by specific tax, such as capital gains, profits and income, property, sales, etc.
Among various barriers to increasing employment of older workers, this paper focuses on two notable ones that are relevant for the future of work. First, older workers engaged in codifiable, routine tasks are particularly prone to the risk of being displaced by computers and robots. Second, several countries have in place various labour market institutions that encourage early retirement, such as exceptional entitlements or looser criteria for unemployment and disability benefits applied to older individuals. This paper presents evidence that these two factors reinforce each other to push older workers out of employment. It is found that older workers who are more exposed to digital technologies are more likely to leave employment, and that this effect is significantly magnified when they are eligible to an extension of unemployment benefits until they start drawing old age pension. Furthermore, a simple simulation based on the empirical findings illustrates that a reform that tightens the eligibility for the benefit extension would increase mostly the employment of older workers that are more exposed to digital technologies.
Cette base de données annuelles couvre un large éventail de statistiques sur le commerce international des pays de l'OCDE. Elle constitue une source fiable de données en valeur par produit et par pays partenaire. Chacun des trois premiers volumes des Statistiques du commerce international par produit présente les statistiques relatives à six pays, celles-ci étant publiées dès réception des données. Les quatrième et cinquième présentent sept pays et le sixième volume porte sur cinq pays ainsi que les deux groupements de pays de l'OCDE ; OCDE Total et UE28-Extra.
Pour chaque pays sont présentés des tableaux se référant aux sections et divisions de la classification Système Harmonisé SH 2012 (une et deux positions). Chaque tableau permet de visualiser à la fois les importations et les exportations des cinq années les plus récentes par produit pour plus de soixante-dix pays partenaires ou groupes de pays partenaires.
This reliable source of yearly data covers a wide range of statistics on international trade of OECD countries and provides detailed data in value by commodity and by partner country. The first three volumes of International Trade by Commodity Statistics each contain the tables for six countries, published in the order in which they become available. The fourth and fifth contain seven countries and the sixth volume includes five countries as well as the OECD country groupings OECD Total and EU28-Extra.
For each country, this publication shows detailed tables relating to the Harmonised System HS 2012 classification, Sections and Divisions (one- and two- digit). Each table presents imports and exports of a given commodity with more than seventy partner countries or country groupings for the most recent five-year period available.
Following five years of economic growth, employment in Finland increased to 72.6% of the working-age population in 2019. The effects of the strong recovery, however, were not felt by all, and long-term unemployment remains stubbornly high.
This report uses a statistical clustering model to map individuals with similar support needs into 8 “faces” of joblessness: (1) the rural inactive; (2) unstable workers; (3) skilled retirees; (4) urban active; (5) female carers; (6) low-skilled youth; (7) prime-aged low skilled; and finally (8) those with limited financial incentives.
These results shed light on the effectiveness of existing employment support strategies, and lay the foundation for the development of holistic policy packages: that are tailored to the barriers people face; that recognise most people with weak labour-market attachment face multiple barriers, and that coordinate policy interventions across policy domains and institutions accordingly.
The COVID-19 pandemic has plunged Finland into a deep recession, albeit less severe than in most other OECD countries. Finland managed to bring the first wave of the coronavirus under control quickly through a combination of voluntary mobility reductions and timely containment measures and is on track to do the same for the second wave. Nevertheless, many people have been laid off and the budgetary costs of supporting household- and business incomes have been considerable. Once the recovery is underway, substantial consolidation measures will be needed to achieve the government’s objective of eliminating the structural budget deficit by the end of the decade. Closing routes to early retirement would make a large contribution to achieving this objective.
SPECIAL FEATURE: RAISING EMPLOYMENT
This country policy profile on education in Finland is part of the Education Policy Outlook series. Building on the first policy profile for Finland (2013), it offers a concise analysis of where the education system stands today in terms of strengths, challenges and ongoing policy efforts, and how this compares to other systems. The profile brings together over a decade’s worth of policy analysis by the Education Policy Outlook, as well as the latest OECD data, relevant thematic and country-specific work and other international and national evidence. It also offers analysis of the Finnish education system’s initial responses to the COVID-19 crisis and provides insight into approaches to building greater responsiveness and resilience for the future
The COVID-19 crisis has had a profound impact on SME access to finance. In particular, the sudden drop in revenues created acute liquidity shortages, threatening the survival of many viable businesses. The report documents an increase in demand for bank lending in the first half of 2020, and a steady supply of credit thanks to government interventions. On the other hand, other sources of finance declined, in particular early-stage equity.
This paper, a special edition of Financing SMEs and Entrepreneurs, focuses on the impacts of COVID-19 on SME access to finance, along with government policy responses. It reveals that the pre-crisis financing environment was broadly favourable for SMEs and entrepreneurs, who benefited from low interest rates, loose credit standards and an increasingly diverse offer of financing instruments.
It documents the unprecedented scope and scale of the policy responses undertaken by governments world-wide, and details their key characteristics, and outlines the principal issues and policy challenges for the next phases of the pandemic, such as the over-indebtedness of SMEs and the need to continue to foster a diverse range of financing instruments for SMEs.
Ce rapport est une édition spéciale du Tableau de bord de l’OCDE sur le financement des PME et des entrepreneurs, publication phare de l’OCDE. Il examine en détail les conséquences du COVID-19 sur l’accès des PME au financement, ainsi que les mesures prises en conséquence par les pouvoirs publics. Il apparaît qu’avant la crise, les conditions de financement étaient globalement favorables pour les PME et les entrepreneurs, qui bénéficiaient de faibles taux d’intérêt, de critères accommodants d’octroi des crédits et d’une offre de plus en plus diversifiée d’instruments de financement. Mais la crise du COVID‑19 a profondément bouleversé l’accès des PME au financement. Plus particulièrement, l’effondrement brutal du chiffre d’affaires des entreprises a provoqué de graves pénuries de liquidités qui ont mis en danger la survie de bon nombre d’entreprises viables. Ce rapport fait état d’une augmentation de la demande de prêts bancaires au cours du premier semestre de 2020, et d’une stabilité de l’offre de crédit grâce à l’action des pouvoirs publics. Parallèlement, on a observé un recul d’autres sources de financement, en particulier l’apport de fonds propres au stade du démarrage. Le rapport réunit des données sur le périmètre et l’ampleur des mesures prises par les gouvernements dans le monde, et en précise les principales caractéristiques. Il décrit les principaux enjeux stratégiques du financement des PME qui se poseront au cours des prochaines phases de la pandémie ; il s’agira en effet d’éviter le surendettement des PME, de promouvoir une gamme diversifiée d’instruments de financement, de stimuler la création d’entreprises et de renforcer la résilience des PME par des mesures structurelles.
Under Action 14, countries have committed to implement a minimum standard to strengthen the effectiveness and efficiency of the mutual agreement procedure (MAP). The MAP is included in Article 25 of the OECD Model Tax Convention and commits countries to endeavour to resolve disputes related to the interpretation and application of tax treaties. The Action 14 Minimum Standard has been translated into specific terms of reference and a methodology for the peer review and monitoring process. The minimum standard is complemented by a set of best practices.
The peer review process is conducted in two stages. Stage 1 assesses countries against the terms of reference of the minimum standard according to an agreed schedule of review. Stage 2 focuses on monitoring the follow-up of any recommendations resulting from jurisdictions' Stage 1 peer review report. This report reflects the outcome of the Stage 2 peer monitoring of the implementation of the Action 14 Minimum Standard by Finland.