Bio
I’m an economist (PhD, MIT) and an Assistant Professor of Economics at Stockholm University. I’m also affiliated with RFBerlin, Etla, and IZA.
My research focuses on technology, work, and psychology using novel large-scale data. My latest work documents that when firms adopted advanced technologies they increased employment—contrasting with common concerns about the future of work.
The media has featured my research widely, including in The Economist and Wired. My PhD thesis received the Upjohn Institute Award and the main Finnish newspaper, HS, listed me in their 35 under 35. I’ve also created a real-time forecast ETLAnow that predicts unemployment using Google search data.
CV (Updated March 2024)
Fields: Labor Economics, Technology and Innovation, Psychology and Economics.
Email: joonas.tuhkuri@su.se
Tel: +358 400 239 818
Address:
Stockholm University
Department of Economics
106 91 Stockholm, Sweden
Working Papers
(with Johannes Hirvonen and Aapo Stenhammar)
Last Updated: May 2022
under revision for the Quarterly Journal of Economics
Abstract (click to expand): We present novel evidence on the effects of advanced technologies on employment, skill demand, and firm performance. The main finding is that advanced technologies led to increases in employment and no change in skill composition. Our main research design focuses on a technology subsidy program in Finland that induced sharp increases in technology investment in manufacturing firms. Our data directly measure multiple technologies and skills and track firms and workers over time. We demonstrate novel text analysis and machine learning methods to perform matching and to measure specific technological changes. To understand our findings, we outline a theoretical framework that contrasts two types of technological change: process versus product. We document that the firms used new technologies to produce new types of output rather than replace workers with technologies within the same type of production. The results contrast with the ideas that technologies necessarily replace workers or are skill biased.
Online Appendix
Slides
Featured in The Economist
(with Ramin Izadi)
Last Updated: March 2024
under revision for the Journal of Labor Economics
Abstract (click to expand): We use cognitive and personality test records of half a million Finnish men to describe the trends in labor-market returns to psychological traits between 2001 and 2015. Consistent with earlier research, we observe a decline in the value of cognitive skills and an increase in the value of noncognitive skills. Our novel results show that extraversion-related traits drive the rising returns to noncognitive skills. The returns to conscientiousness-related traits have remained stable. The increasing gains from extraversion are driven by those at the lower end of earnings and by the employment margin. We also show that these traits predict different paths in the labor market. Extraversion predicts lower education and more work experience. Cognitive ability and conscientiousness are linked to sorting into highly educated and high-paying jobs.
Featured in Marginal Revolution
(with Ramin Izadi)
Last Updated: February 2023
Abstract (click to expand): Labor markets are in constant change. Which personality traits and skills help workers to deal with a changing environment? This paper documents how responses to labor-market shocks vary by individuals’ psychological traits. We construct measures of cognitive ability, extraversion, and conscientiousness using standardized personality and cognitive tests administered during military service to 79% of Finnish men born 1962–1979. We analyze establishment closures and mass layoffs between 1995–2010 and document heterogeneous responses to the shock. Extraversion is the strongest predictor of adaptation: the negative effect of a mass layoff on earnings is 20% smaller for those with one standard deviation higher scores of extraversion. Conscientiousness appears to have no differential impact conditional on other traits. Cognitive ability and education predict a significantly smaller initial drop in earnings but have no long-term advantage. Our findings appear to be driven directly by smaller dis-employment effects: extraverted and high cognitive-ability individuals find re-employment faster in a similar occupation and industry they worked in before. Extraversion’s adaptive value is robust to controlling for pre-shock education, occupation, and industry, which rules out selection into different careers as the driving mechanism. Extraverts are slightly more likely to retain employment in their current establishment during a mass layoff event, but the retention effect is not large enough to explain the smaller earnings drop.
Featured in Marginal Revolution
Last Updated: February 2023
Abstract (click to expand): This paper analyzes the impact of manufacturing decline on children. To do so, it considers local employment structure—characterizing lost manufacturing jobs and left-behind places—high-school dropout rates, and college access in the US over 1990–2010. To establish a basis for causal inference, the paper uses variations in trade exposure from China, following its entry to the WTO, as an instrument for manufacturing decline in the US. While the literature on job loss has emphasized negative effects on children, the main conclusion of this research is that the rapid US manufacturing decline decreased high-school dropout rates and possibly increased college access. The magnitudes of the estimates suggest that for every 3-percentage-point decline in manufacturing as a share of total employment, the high-school dropout rate declined by 1 percentage point. The effects are largest in the areas with high racial and socioeconomic segregation and in those with larger African American populations. The results are consistent with the idea that the manufacturing decline increased returns and decreased opportunity costs of education, and with sociological accounts linking working-class environment and children’s education.
Slides with more detailed results
Work in Progress
Scarcity vs. Surplus: New Evidence on Labor Supply and Industrialization
(with Jonas Mueller-Gastell)
Abstract (click to expand): Does shortage of labor or abundance of labor encourage technology adoption? Are machines and men substitutes so that labor scarcity induces investment in technology, or are they complements so that availability of workers facilitates technology adoption? The project uses local labor supply shocks in Finland at the verge of industrialization to study how technology and labor supply interact. These shocks come from two sources: combat deaths and evacuations from invaded areas into designated towns during the Second World War, 1939–45. The project uses newly digitized local and plant-level data on technology use by type, employment, and organization. We find a positive effect of labor abundance on manufacturing development. Evidence on horsepower per person shows that additional labor does not crowd out capital but complements capital investment. Manufacturing employment share and gross value-added per person increase substantially across all identification strategies, including strategies based on military and evacuation plans.
The Economist: Economists are revising their views on robots and jobs, 2022.
The Economist: Leader: The world should welcome the rise of the robots, 2022.
Wired: Automation Isn’t the Biggest Threat to US Factory Jobs, 2022.
Bloomberg: Understanding Europe’s Economy in 100 Billion Google Searches, 2016.
Data
Projects
ETLAnow: Real-time unemployment forecasts based on Google search data. 2014–
Featured in The Washington Post, Bloomberg, Chicago Tribune, YLE News, HS, and widely in the global media.
Code
Occupation Codes: This package harmonizes Finnish occupation codes.
Industry Codes: This package harmonizes Finnish industry codes (2 and 3 digit levels).
County and Subregion Codes: This package harmonizes Finnish county codes into consistent subregions.
Reports
Policy Brief: New Evidence on the Effect of Technology on Employment and Skill Demand, ETLA Brief 108, 2022 (with J. Hirvonen and A. Stenhammar).
Forecasting Unemployment with Google Searches, ETLA Working Paper 35, 2016.
ETLAnow: A Model for Forecasting with Big Data, ETLA Report 54, 2016.
Big Data: Do Google Searches Predict Unemployment?, University of Helsinki, 2015.
Big Data: Google Searches Predict Unemployment in Finland, ETLA Report 31, 2014.
International Sourcing in Finland and Sweden, ETLA B 275, 2017 (with H. Lööf et al.).
Globalization Threatens One Quarter of Finnish Employment, ETLA Brief 46, 2016.
Finland in Global Value Chains, Prime Minister’s Office Publications 11/2016, 2016 (with J. Ali-Yrkkö et al.).
Offshoring R&D, CESIS Working Paper 439, 2016 (with H. Lööf et al.).
Trade and Innovation: Matched Worker-Firm-Level Evidence, ETLA Working Paper 39, 2016.
Women and Men in Central Government 2012, Ministry of Finance, 20/2013, 2013.
