Academic literature on the topic 'Debts, Public – Finland'

The Political-Budget Cycle in Countries of the European Union We empirically estimate the political-budget cycle in the member countries of the European Union in period of 1988-2008. We indirectly analyze the potential of these countries to deal with increasing public debts which were augmented by the global economic crisis. The selection of the EU countries depends on three characteristics of democracy - shared power, openness and adaptability. The openness of democracy is the most important characteristics in relation to effective behavior of governments. We suppose that governments are motivated to make electoral manipulation in countries which have lower level of openness. We choose Finland, the Netherlands, Austria, Estonia, Poland, the Czech Republic, Romania and Greece to include into our sample of countries. The research of political-budget cycle confirmed our assumption. We did not find the political-budget cycle in Finland, the Netherlands and Estonia. On the other hand, we identified that Austrian, Czech and Greece governments had a tendency to manipulate fiscal policy before elections. The regression coefficients of Poland electoral dummies were very statistically significant but they had a wrong sign. We could not estimate political-budget cycle in Romania due to the short time series.

The European debt crisis has had significant political and economic implications throughout the Eurozone, particularly for its peripheral South. These were especially obvious for Greece, which had to face elevated levels of austerity and sign three different bailout programs within eight years to remain economically solvent and retain its position in the context of European institutions. Here, we track how the perception of the work values of Greeks by other member states—such as Germany, Slovakia or Finland—along with ensuing public debates adversely affected the bailout program design and implementation in Greece, and had significant political consequences throughout the Eurozone.

The 2008–2009 crisis and the subsequent euro zone crisis dealt a serious blow to the Finnish economy. 2009 was marked by a significant reduction in the country's GDP, an increase in unemployment, and an increase in public debt. In the following years, Finland did not experience stable economic growth, and in 2014, mutual sanctions between Russia and the EU made their contribution. It was only in 2016 that the country began its systematic return to its pre-crisis state. Finnish municipalities bordering Russia since the 1990’s. the twentieth century is the least economically developed part of the country, which at the same time is most closely connected with our country due to its geographical location. In this regard, in this article, the author considered the economic situation of these municipalities on the basis of available official statistics. It was found that the dynamics of the considered indicators most often correlate with what was happening in the country as a whole. In 2014–2015, no special negative consequences from counter-sanctions on the part of our country were revealed. The exception was the indicators related to the service sector of border municipalities, which in 2014–2015 were noticeably worse than the average for Finland.

PurposeThis paper studies the usability of LG financial statements as perceived by local councillors. By drawing on a comparative view of two countries with different periods of accrual accounting use in the public sector, the authors investigate how local councillors assess the usability of LG financial statements in order to question accounting reform success. Determinants that influence the usability assessment are explored.Design/methodology/approachExploratory design: data were collected from questionnaires with 24 local councillors from five Finnish local governments (LGs) and 30 local councillors from six German LGs. An adjusted variant of the system usability scale was analysed with descriptive statistics and non-parametric group comparisons.FindingsIn both countries, the usability assessment of financial statements seems to be positive, indicating a successful reform process. In Finland, where the accrual government accounting reform has had a longer time to settle in, councillors seem to assess usability only partially better than German councillors. Several determinants of the usability assessment were detected, such as size and debt level of the LG as well as local councillors' gender, political orientation and education. Generally, councillors need more assistance and training in using financial statements.Originality/valueThe study is the first to conduct a quantitative assessment of the usability of LG financial statements as perceived by councillors. The system usability scale was adjusted to a public sector reporting context. The paper adopts a transnational comparative approach.

Problem gambling among young people is an emerging trend globally. The online environment in particular offers various possibilities for gambling engagement. This is the first cross-national survey study using the social ecological model to analyze problem gambling, especially in the online context. The study aimed to analyze how different social ecological spheres explain problem gambling. Participants were young people aged 15–25 in the United States (n = 1212), South Korea (n = 1192), Spain (n = 1212), and Finland (n = 1200). The South Oaks Gambling Screen (SOGS) instrument measured problem gambling. The regression models analyzed problem gambling with measures of intrapersonal, interpersonal, organizational, and societal spheres. Spanish participants had the highest SOGS score for problem gambling. In all countries, the variations in problem gambling were best explained by the organizational sphere measures (26%) when compared to the intrapersonal (11%), interpersonal (5%), and societal (3%) spheres. In the full model, the organizational sphere measures had strong associations with problem gambling. These included consumer debt, online gambling community participation, online casino participation, and exposure to online pop-up advertisements. Problem gambling was also associated with conformity to group norms in the interpersonal sphere, and male gender and impulsivity in the intrapersonal sphere. Cross-national results were similar in different countries. Within the final model, gambling community participation had the strongest association with problem gambling (β = 0.23, p < 0.001). The online context plays a major role in problem gambling behavior. The social ecological model is a useful tool for tackling problem gambling and developing preventative measures.

AbstractBackground and aimsSocial factors and social environment shape the pain behavior of patients. Social workers support pain treatment in a multidisciplinary pain clinic by altering the social environment of a patient. Even though a social worker in a multi-professional care team contributes to the care of select, severely pain-afflicted patients extensively, neither the patient socio-demographic status nor interventions by social workers have been systematically documented. Only individual case histories have been published. Developing social work activities, which have potential financial consequences, for example, requires charting the current situation prior to systematic research into the efficacy of individual social work interventions.MethodsThis study systematically details the performance and work volume of the social worker, as well as the socio-demographics of patients during a 16-month period in a multidisciplinary pain clinic of a university hospital.ResultsFifty-five patients were included. Twenty-nine were women and 26 men. They were about 10% of all patients seen at the pain clinic during the same time. Most of the patients were at their middle age. The largest group of subjects worked in public or other services. The second largest group consisted of those working in stores, hotels and restaurants. Over half of the subjects worked in the service industry. Since the subjects had scant vocational education, they worked mainly in manual labor. Most of the patients had problems with making a living, signifying that a major number of the patients visited the social worker because of financial problems. About half of the patients were indebt and three were undergoing debt counseling. Of homeowners, 21% were indebt, while the portion of those living rented accommodation was almost two thirds. All patients seen by the social worker received some form of public assistance. Over half of the patients had participated in rehabilitation assessment. The social worker saw 39 patients once, one patient twice and 15 patients three or more times. The duration of a visit was typically 1–2 h. The issues of a patient are addressed by contacting authorities and negotiating with other health care staff. According to the used ‘SOSU’ classification data, the social situation was charted for 49 patients, while the benefits and assistance provided by the Social Insurance Institution of Finland was discussed with half of the patients. The social worker discussed employment based pension with about a third of the patients. Social assistance, the last-resort economic assistance under social welfare, was considered with one fifth of the patients. Psychosocial work was recorded for 19 patients, comprising longer-term, supportive discussion.ConclusionsThe majority of the patients is of active working age but their working capacity is often decreased. However, they have difficulties in getting compensation for reduced ability to making a living. Hence, they have economic difficulties of various types and need counselling and support.The main duty of the social worker appeared to be advising the patient in using the social welfare system, as the clients turned out to constitute a marginalized group.

This article is part of a joint project conducted by Finnish and Estonian scholars that aims to comparatively study the famine of the 1860s in those countries. Unlike Finland, research into the last large-scale famine of the 19th century has begun only rather recently in Estonia. Kersti Lust has contributed the most to this area of research. The task of this article is to trace the development of agriculture in the present-day Estonian area in the 1860s, focusing primarily on the size of harvests. Attention is paid to some factors that still made agriculture vulnerable even in the 1860s. Additionally, the article also considers methods adopted at the local level in attempts to resolve the situation, alleviate food shortages, and ward off famine. The appendices to the annual reports drawn up by the governors general of Estland and Livland include statistical data on the amounts of winter grain (rye), summer grains (barley, oats) and potatoes sowed, the size of their harvests (in chetverts), and the number of inhabitants. These appendices also provide an estimate of crop yields (how many seeds these types of crops produced). The fact that more precise information from Estland on 1868 is missing has to be pointed out as the largest gap. In spite of imperfection, the absolute numbers presented in the appendices of the reports from the governors are used in this article since there are no better options. The archives of rural municipal governments provide the opportunity to ascertain how different localities tried to alleviate the situation that emerged as the result of crop failure and to ensure that all members of the rural municipality were supplied with grain. The extent of crop failure, the use of communal grain, and the purchase of grain using money from the rural municipal treasury or on loan unfold from rural municipal council transcripts. Many archives of rural municipal governments have been lost over time. There are only 156 collections in total that contain transcripts from 1868 and 1869. The most important grain was rye, which could withstand poor growing conditions. The amount of winter grains sowed in Estonian territory as a whole was around 200,000 chetverts in the 1860s, and in the better years, the harvest of winter grains exceeded the threshold of 1,000,000 chetverts. The average crop yield of winter grains was 4.8 in the 1860s (excluding 1868). Barley and oats were primarily grown as summer grains, whereas oats were mostly used as animal feed. It was only starting in the 1830s that potato cultivation had begun spreading more extensively in the Baltic region, whereas it started being used primarily in distilleries, where it was cheaper raw material compare to rye. Unlike grains, potatoes were cultivated considerably less in Livland than in Estland. The potato harvest failed in Estland in 1866 and 1867, when the crop yield was only 2.8. The crop nevertheless did not fail in 1868 in the northern part of Livland as a whole, but it was poor (the crop yield was 3.4). Good potato harvests in Estland in both 1869 and 1870, when it set a record, surpassing the 662,000 chetvert threshold, contributed to recovery from the famine. Crop failure (less than three seeds) was not universal, rather it affected only one crop type and was mostly regional. In Northern Estonia and primarily in Saaremaa, the years of poor harvests in 1865 and 1867 were followed by the rainy summer of 1868, which brought with it crop failure and famine. The most complicated situation was in Saaremaa because the soil there was not very fertile. There winter grain yielded 2 seeds, summer grains 2.5 and potatoes 0.5 seeds. Thus, less potatoes were harvested there than were planted. Tartu County was the only district in Livland where average or satisfactory, and even good harvests were almost consistently achieved in the 1860s. Grain grown in Estland and Northern Livland was mostly consumed in the domestic market. Manorial estates cultivated grain primarily with the needs of the market in mind, while farms had to look after covering their own needs first and foremost. At that time, 1 chetvert of winter grain and 1 chetvert of summer grains was considered the food requirement of one person for a year. In Estland, 1.1–1.7 chetverts of rye and 1.2–2.2 chetverts of summer grains were produced per inhabitant in the 1860s. Rye was produced in quantities below this norm (0.8) in 1865, 1867, as well as in 1868, according to indirect data. In Northern Livland, 1–1.4 chetverts of rye and 1.1–2.0 chetverts of summer grains were produced per inhabitant. There the production of rye was slightly below the norm (0.9) in 1865, 1867, 1868 and also in 1870. Although crop yield was higher in Northern Livland, the large number of very small holdings in the crown manorial estates there, where secondary livelihoods, primarily fishing, occupied an important place, caused lower indices per person. The rye harvest per person was lowest in Pärnu County and Saaremaa (0.6) in 1868. The relative proportion of crown manors was especially large in these two counties. Alongside harvests and crop yields, it is also necessary to examine how the population coped in situations of crop failure and hunger, and what measures were taken for alleviating grain shortages. This particular crop failure was the first serious touchstone for the rural municipal communities that had only just been liberated from the control of the manorial estates by the Baltic Rural Municipalities Act in 1866. According to this act, each rural municipal community had to elect a council, which was the governing body of the rural municipal community. Thus, the council was the body that had to make the decisions concerning the use of the communal granary’s grain reserves, the taking out of loans, and distributing aid. Harvests in many regions of Estland and Northern Livland, and especially in Saaremaa, were so small in 1868 as the result of crop failure that they did not make it possible to survive over the winter or to allocate grain for the next sowing. The crisis reached its culmination in the winter of 1868 and the spring of 1869, when famine struck the most backward regions, gripping the province of Estland more or less as a whole, whereas the situation in Lääne County was the worst. Of the counties of the northern part of Livland, it struck only Saaremaa severely. Epidemics broke out in addition to the famine, primarily typhus, as well as dysentery, measles, smallpox, etc. The rural municipality was obliged to care for all its members, especially if they encountered difficulties due to either illness or poverty. Particular attention started being paid to providing poorer people with food and shelter. Food supply policy in the Russian state was founded on maintaining reserves in local communal granaries in order to prevent famine in the event of crop failure. In an emergency, members of the community could borrow grain from the granary for food or sowing, but the borrowed grain had to be returned together with interest in the form of grain from the new crop. In good years, the rural municipality could sell the surplus grain and set aside the money earned from such sales in the rural municipal treasury. When the communal granary’s grain reserves had been distributed and the granary was empty, the next measure was to purchase additional grain in return for the savings of the rural municipality, using both money from the treasury as well as obligations. In some rural municipalities, such measures were sufficient, and the rural municipality managed in this way to ride out this difficult period and also to feed its poor. More exceptional measures did not have to be adopted. This, of course, depended on the condition of the rural municipal treasury, which differed widely. Money taken from the rural municipal treasury was also a loan that had to be paid back. Here the principle of joint surety applied, thus this also had to be paid back on behalf of those who were themselves incapable of doing so. These measures nevertheless were not sufficient everywhere because primarily in Northern Estonia and Saaremaa, rural municipality transcripts record that the whole rural municipality had declined into great need and poverty, and all of the poor were starving. If the rural municipality had spent its own financial resources, the next step was to apply for a crown loan with which to procure grain, which would in turn be loaned out to the people of the rural municipality. The public authorities already made it known well in advance that rural municipalities could take out loans in an emergency, stressing that this was not aid and that it had to be paid back. The rural municipality could use granary reserves and money from the rural municipal treasury and receive support loans from the state only with the consent of the parish judge. The threshold for requesting permission was quite high because rural municipalities mostly already had communal granary debts, and the authorities feared the creation of new debts. The decision to take out a loan was not taken lightly in the rural municipalities because both paying back the loan and the payment of interest were considered to be too difficult. Taking out a crown loan was placed on the agenda only in the event of a very serious emergency, when reserves were completely depleted. The need for loans continued to grow at the end of 1868 and over the first half of 1869, when there were shortages of bread grains as well as seed grain. Different types of tactics can be seen in the case of taking out loans that corresponded to the size and opportunities of the rural municipality. In some rural municipalities, it was common procedure to assess the situation separately for each month, and smaller sums within the range of 100–600 roubles were taken out repeatedly as loans. Elsewhere – primarily in larger rural municipalities – the aim was to borrow a larger sum all at once that exceeded 1,000 roubles. A small proportion of the rural municipalities in Järva, Viru and Lääne counties had taken out a loan by then, but the sum could even extend to 3,000 roubles. Since the rural municipalities had been made responsible for looking after supplying the peasantry with food, resolving the situation depended on the extent of the famine and the economic condition of the rural municipality. At the same time, the rural municipality lacked sufficient power for coping with the tasks assigned to it. The resources of the rural municipality were limited, and it did not have possibilities for redistributing reserves between rural municipalities. In cases of more serious famine when communal granary reserves were insufficient, the manorial estate and, above all, the state had the means for assisting the population. Grain harvests did not depend solely upon the weather or other natural conditions, but also on agrarian relations. The farm economy was still almost entirely dependent on the manorial estate economy in the 1860s. Major changes took place in the 1860s aimed at accelerating the transition from the mode of management based on corvée to a system based on a money economy. The reorganisation of relations between farm and manorial estate did not immediately bring any noticeable changes. The three-field system remained in use in compact hamlets with fields divided into strips in Estland and Saaremaa until the enclosure of farms, which was usually carried out just before the manor put the farms up for sale. Enclosure became universal in the latter half of the 19th century, when the sale of farmland to peasants as hereditary property became its primary impetus. The outright purchase of farms took place early in Livland precisely in those areas with predominantly dispersed settlement where farms had accumulated money from the sale of flax and where it was not necessary to carry out the enclosure of farms before starting to sell farms. At the same time, this is precisely what led to Northern Livland’s more rapid commercial and financial development compared to Estland. Areas with enclosed farms that had been purchased outright were naturally not immune to unfavourable weather conditions and crop failure. They nevertheless had better chances for coping with grain shortages. Only the establishment of new economic relations, primarily the enclosure of farms and the growth of peasant smallholdings, created the prerequisites for the transition to crop rotation and for increased crop yields, which made it possible to cope better with setbacks.

The existence of economic crises has created a need for new sources through economic history. Most of the time, public debt becomes crucial as a new source. For this purpose, the study tries to explain these questions: Is there any relationship between public debt and economic growth, and if there is a relationship between them what is the size or power of this effect. In this context, panel analysis has been made for selected 14 European countries which are Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and Turkey at the time of 1980-2017. The results indicated that public debt has a detrimental effect on economic growth with different shares, except Denmark and Norway.

AbstractMany studies in the empirical literature show that public debt is negatively correlated with economic growth but there is no paper that studies the causal links between these variables using rigorous tests based on Granger’s ideas. Accordingly, we investigate the causal links between debt-to-GDP ratio and economic growth using both linear parametric and nonlinear nonparametric Granger causality tests. We focus on 12 euro countries for the period 1970–2012. Our empirical results suggest a unidirectional causality running from debt to economic growth for Spain and Portugal and a bidirectional causality for Belgium, Germany, Greece, Ireland and Italy. No causality in either direction is identified for Austria, Finland, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. Finally, for France, the tests provide evidence for a unidirectional causality running from GDP growth to debt-to-GDP ratio. In addition, the nonlinear tests indicate that overlooking nonlinearities may result in misleading conclusions about Granger causality. Caveats of the analysis, as well as policy conclusions, are also discussed.

The gambling business entails geo-economic opportunities for islands, especially in times of online gambling. However, it also involves risks like ill mental health, debt, and social problems. Furthermore, a heavy reliance on gambling revenues involves great moral dilemmas, especially when the gambling provision is operated within a not-for-profit public regime. This study concerns how these aspects are negotiated in the public discussion in Åland Islands, an autonomous group of islands situated between Finland and Sweden. By ruling of its regional parliament and the Finnish Lotteries Act, the Åland-based gambling monopoly company Ålands penningautomatförening (Paf) has the right to provide onshore gambling on the Islands, on the Internet, and on cruise ships trafficking the Baltic Sea. The study examines Paf’s role as a pillar of the local community, and the ways in which this position is sustained and contested. By analyzing a corpus of 862 online texts from local newspapers and public radio services from 2006–2018, this study demonstrates how Åland depends on an incongruous public construction of Paf as a responsible actor that is simultaneously criticized for not exercising greater transparency and responsibility, highlighting a contradiction between the provision of harmful gambling products and economic benefits for the community.

Defence date: 31 March 2017
Examining Board: Professor Hanspeter Kriesi, EUI (EUI Supervisor); Professor Pepper D. Culpepper, formerly EUI/University of Oxford (Co-Supervisor); Professor Mark Blyth, Brown University; Professor Niamh Hardiman, University College Dublin
This thesis explores why, and in what political process, austerity became the uniformly accepted policy response of Eurozone governments in the economic crisis of 2008–2012. It traces the path to austerity in two distinct Eurozone Member States, Ireland and Finland. Ireland, in this crisis, became a debtor country that had to do heavy domestic adjustment; Finland, by contrast, ended up in the group of Eurozone creditor countries, imposing structural adjustment programmes on the debtor countries. The analysis of the thesis emphasizes political agency behind ideas and shows the political process where perceptions about the economic crisis were formed. It argues that two types of politicization of the crisis were necessary for the outcome of interest, the prevalence of austerity, to happen. The Irish case demonstrates a two-stage process of politicization and internalization of the crisis, where the significant policy decisions were reached in a transnational, fairly technocratic policy process but were debated and internalized in domestic, redistributive and politicized process. The transnational stage was characterized by economic and practical reasoning, whereas the domestic stage represented a conflict about distributive justice. For Finland, the 2008–9 financial crisis was not domestically politicized at all. This only changed in 2010–12, when the crisis became re-interpreted as a sovereign debt crisis of the GIIPS countries. Yet the politicization in Finland did not come about as a typical domestic redistributive debate, but as a new type of supranational conflict over distributive justice. Such conflict was not primarily framed in terms of just burden-sharing, but in terms of national and European interest. It was simultaneously a debate on borders and boundaries – polity and identity – as it was about distributive justice. Alongside rhetoric, the official line of Finnish EU policy became tougher and Finland became perceived as an increasingly difficult and selfish member of the EU community.

This chapter analyses the sales of crown farms as a form of financing the war. The early modern Swedish crown was a major landowner, as, under Swedish law, all farms deserted or unable to pay their taxes three years in a row became crown property. The article shows how the selling of these farms to private buyers became an important source of revenue in the 18th century, first to finance the Great Northern War and later to cover the massive public debt created by the war. By purchasing crown farms, private Swedish and Finnish individuals became indirectly important financers of war.