Juho Alasalmi

Logo

View My GitHub Profile

Welcome       Research       Teaching       Software       CV

Work in Progress

Self-Signaling and Voting for Redistribution (Job market paper) (single authored) There seems to be more to voting than policy. Nevertheless, models of voting tend to focus on aggregate policy preferences. I model voting for redistribution under uncertainty over future incomes with imperfect memory and anticipatory utility. Imperfect memory gives votes meanings as signals of future income prospects. Anticipatory utility motivates concern over the meanings of votes. Voting becomes self-signaling: Voting for low tax rate is consistent with the desirable belief of high future consumption. Voting and policy preferences diverge and voting does not aggregate policy preferences: fewer voters vote for redistribution than prefer redistribution. Higher income risk increases the value of self-signaling which decreases the demand for redistribution. If voters do not perceive themselves as pivotal a policy trap where a decisive coalition votes against its best interest may arise. Working paper here

Self-selection of Job-to-job Migrants on Match Quality (single authored) Many migrants migrate after having found a job in the destination. Relocation choices are then not based on source and destination location wage distributions but on specific realizations from these distributions. I extend the Roy-Borjas migrant selection model with job search, wage dispersion and observability of source and destination wage realizations prior to relocation choice. This model of selection of job-to-job migrants, while nesting the benchmark results on selection on skills, predicts negative selection on source and positive selection on destination job match quality. Using high quality administrative data, I compare selection on residual wages between job-toj-ob migrants and workers who similarly contract a job outside their location of residence but choose to commute. Mobility costs amplify selection, and comparing job-to-job migrants and commuters, two groups similar in their unobservable skills facing different costs of mobility, identifies migrants’ residual selection (in)consistent with selection on job match quality (unobservable skills) predicted by the theory. Working paper here

Hidden Overtime: Optimal Contracts with (Self-)Deceptive Effort Reports (with Susanne Goldlücke and Michelle Jordan) Requiring extra hours to get a job done signals low skills. With unobservable effort (hours of work), image concerned agents may prefer to underreport effort to hide low skills from the principal or themselves. We show how such “hidden overtime” can arise as a consequence of the optimal contract if the principal asks for reports but has no way to ensure that these reports are also correct. The effects of different monitoring systems and regulatory regimes are evaluated. Working paper here

Motivated Prospects of Upward Mobility (single authored) The prospect of upward mobility (POUM) hypothesis conjectures that the reason why the poor do not expropriate the rich and sometimes seem to vote against their self-interest is that they expect upward mobility and fear that high redistribution may negatively affect them in the future. This work formalizes the POUM hypothesis by explicitly modeling the voters’ beliefs about their prospective incomes. Anticipation of future consumption creates an incentive for optimism and the poor will form overly optimistic beliefs and vote for low taxes if they value anticipation enough and if their optimism does not cause too drastic a change in tax policy. When beliefs are not conditioned on voting, the poor will always indulge in optimism and may even vote against their best interest. Furthermore, if the incomes of the rich increase as the incomes of the poor stagnate, the poor may demand less redistribution. Working paper here

The Effects of Vocational Labour Market Training: Evidence from Finland (with Henna Busk and Veera Holappa) We study the effects of public-sponsored vocational labour market training on participants’ employment and income in Finland. In controlling for the selection into training, we in addition to constructing control groups out of non-participants, construct control groups out of applied but rejected non-participants. We study the long-term effects spanning 10 years and the heterogeneity of treatment effects across different trainings by their type and duration. We find positive, long-lasting effects spanning for 10 years on employment and earnings. These effects are robust and stable across years and across the lengths of job-search spells preceding training. We find that longer training programs, while creating larger lock-in effects have larger effects than shorter training programs. Our results are robust to the choice of comparison group.

Alueellisesta ja ammatillisesta kohtaannosta (single authored) Arvioin työmarkkinoiden alueellisen ja ammatillisen kohtaannon kehitystä Suomessa vuodesta 2006 alkaen. Muodostan kohtaanto-ongelman suuruutta mittaavan indeksin \cite{csahin2014mismatch}, joka kuvaa kuinka epätasapainoisesti työttömät työnhakijat ja avoimet työpaikat ovat sijoittuneet eri alueille ja eri ammatteihin verrattuna tilanteeseen, jossa alueellinen tai ammatillinen liikkuvuus eivät olisi rajoitteita. Arvioin sekä alueellisen että ammatillisen kohtaanto-ongelman trendinomaisesti pienentyneen 2000-luvun aikana. Kokonaisuudessaan työmarkkinoiden kohtaanto on Beveridge-käyrällä mitattuna kuitenkin heikentynyt. Koska epätasapaino työttömien työnhakijoiden ja avoimien työpaikkojen alueellisessa ja ammatillisessa jakaumassa on pienentynyt kohtaannon heikentyminen tuskin johtuu alueellisen tai ammatillisen liikkuvuuden kehityksestä tai rajoitteista. Working paper here

Policy Work and Publications in Finnish

Doctoral Thesis

Master’s Thesis