The Amount of Work: Why More Work Should Be Done in Finland?

Antti Kauhanen () and Vesa Vihriälä

No 50, ETLA Reports from The Research Institute of the Finnish Economy

Abstract: Abstract The amount of work done in the economy has been subject to a lot of debate in Finland recently. Unemployment is considered a major problem. On the other hand, extending annual working time receives little support. In fact, a widely held view is that one should reduce the working time of the currently employed so that more people could be employed. The efforts of the Government to increase labour input, i.a. by reducing length of annual leave or the number of banking holidays are widely criticised. In the report we first describe how much work is done in Finland. Secondly, we recall the key messages of economics about the determination of labour input in a market economy. Thirdly, we endeavour to argue why, in the current Finnish circumstances, increasing the amount of work is useful and important, why the idea of work sharing is flawed, and why reducing labour costs makes sense.

Keywords: Work; Labour input; Employment; Sustainability of public finances (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E24 H5 J2 J3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 29 pages
Date: 2016-02-18
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.etla.fi/wp-content/uploads/ETLA-Raportit-Reports-50.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:rif:report:50

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://www.etla.fi/ ... tehda-enemman-tyota/

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in ETLA Reports from The Research Institute of the Finnish Economy Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kaija Hyvönen-Rajecki ().