معرفی
Jaakko Pehkonen serves as a Professor at the School of Business and Economics, University of Jyväskylä, where he is based in room Ag D313.4. His research is anchored within the Empirical Microeconomics (EME) research group, which specializes in labor economics, health economics, regional economics, and economics of education using micro-level data and advanced econometric techniques. Contactable via jaakko.k.pehkonen@jyu.fi or +358503732133, his work addresses real-world economic policy questions through rigorous empirical analysis.
His research portfolio demonstrates exceptional depth in health-labor market intersections, including analyses of sickness absence policies in healthcare, tobacco smoking's impact on early-career trajectories, and weight-depression relationships using genetic instruments. Additional expertise spans family economics (parental responses to children's job loss), retirement coordination among couples, digital healthcare adoption, and Nordic economic convergence. The EME group's methodological rigor—evident in quasi-experimental designs and Finnish register data utilization—characterizes his contributions to causal inference in applied economics.
Recent publications reveal a strategic focus on policy-relevant microeconometric studies, particularly Finnish register-based analyses of labor market dynamics and health interventions. His work consistently employs difference-in-differences, instrumental variables, and observational study designs to evaluate policy impacts across healthcare, retirement, and unemployment domains. This concentration on causal identification in real-world settings distinguishes his empirical approach within European labor economics.
As a core member of the Empirical Microeconomics research group, Professor Pehkonen contributes to a collaborative ecosystem investigating labor market frictions, health determinants, regional disparities, and educational outcomes. The group's interdisciplinary framework enables comprehensive analysis of socioeconomic phenomena through microdata, fostering evidence-based policy recommendations for Nordic and international contexts.
