Browsing by Author "Hokkanen, Sara"

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
  • No Thumbnail Available
    Item
    Integrating immigrant children into the Nordics: The role of early education and care
    (2024) Hokkanen, Sara; Sarvimäki, Matti; Taloustieteen laitos; Kauppakorkeakoulu; School of Business
    ​This thesis studies the effects of early childhood education and childcare on child outcomes of immigrants in the Nordics through a literature review. The Nordic countries share many characteristics such as large, publicly funded welfare systems, low income inequality, and relatively high share of immigrants having arrived for non-economic reasons. As the Nordic native-immigrant skill gaps are among the largest in the world, it is necessary to evaluate policies aimed to facilitate the integration of immigrants into the Nordic economies. ​The pattern of the results in empirical literature is relatively consistent. Early attendance in both childcare and pre-primary education seems to improve the cognitive outcomes of immigrants and children with disadvantaged socio-economic profiles in general. The long-term effects on earnings and employment of disadvantaged children as adults are positive. For children from high socio-economic backgrounds, the effects of early entry age are mixed, but rarely substantially positive. Overall, the results support the equalizing role of pre-primary programs. Heterogeneity across gender does exist throughout literature, but the results are mixed. While comprehensive analysis on the mechanisms underlying the impact of early education and childcare is scarce, the role of language acquisition seems to hold importance. The benefits of early education on the school performance of immigrant children are likely to be driven to some extent by the reduced cost of language acquisition. This is due to early exposure to the language of the host country in daycare and pre-school institutions, especially when the language spoken at home is highly distant from the local language.
  • No Thumbnail Available
    Item
    The value of corporate social responsibility in times of economic uncertainty
    (2020) Hokkanen, Sara; Stryjan, Miri; Ledyaeva, Svetlana; Taloustieteen laitos; Kauppakorkeakoulu; School of Business
    This paper reviews the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate financial performance (CFP). The ultimate objective is to find out whether CSR can strengthen the financial performance of a company in general as well as during times of unexpected economic uncertainty. Due to incoherency in the literature regarding the relationship, this paper focuses on endogeneity issues in quantitative research and provides insight into potential reasons for the previous ambiguous findings. As a groundwork, an economic motivation for investing in CSR is presented through commonly used theoretical frameworks. Based on the previous empirical research reviewed in this paper, the overall outcome does not deny CSR from having a positive effect on CFP. The results suggest a significant positive correlation between CSR and CFP, with exceptions of some weak or insignificant results for market-based measures such as excess stock returns and firm value. However, during times of increased uncertainty and more precisely during the global financial crisis, such a relationship with market-based financial measures seems again to be significant and positive. Nevertheless, the findings must be considered with caution, since empirical studies on the CSR–CFP relationship suffer from limitations mainly due to endogeneity issues. The endogeneity stems especially from errors in CSR measurement, but also from omitted variable bias and potential simultaneous causality. The researchers have not been able to determine the relationship in question to be causal. Finally, the paper provides an overview of these various limitations and gives suggestions for further research.