Santtu Karhinen (p), Hannu Savolainen , Teemu Ulvi

Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction targets are set globally to prevent climate change, and Finland has its own targets based on the EU’s energy and climate targets for 2030. By participating in the Carbon Neutral Municipalities project, nearly 40 Finnish municipalities have committed to cut down their GHG emissions more than the national target would require. The aim in these municipalities is to achieve 80% reduction in GHG emissions from the level of 2007 by 2030. In this paper we analyze renewable energy potential in eight municipalities in the Northern Finland, that have already taken actions to cut down their GHG emissions by adopting renewable energy technologies. Currently four of these eight municipalities are a part of the Carbon Neutral Municipalities network. Renewable energy potentials were examined and categorized into three
classes. First, wind and solar photovoltaic electricity generation was considered. Secondly, oil-based space heating was assumed to be replaced with a set of ground-source heat and air-source heat pumps. Lastly, the use of fossil fuel (especially peat) in large-scale heat and power generation was replaced with a regional supply of woodchips. Direct and indirect production, value-added and employment effects from utilizing the identified renewable energy were quantified with regional input-output model for one NUTS3 and three NUTS4 classified regions. We show that the
activation of the identified potential has major positive impacts on GHG emissions and regional economies.

Viktor Trasberg (p)

The paper is focusing on regional pattern of alcohol consumption over income groups and related excise duties burden. Understanding driving forces of alcohol consumption in close related countries allows more efficiently design alcohol policies and predict potential outcomes of taxation strategies. Alcohol duties have an impact on society’s tax burden distribution, individuals’ social behavior and cross-border shopping activities. All those aspects have rather clear regional pattern in the Baltic countries, explained in the paper.
Paper’s statistical analyses is conducted on the basis of a consumer survey, carried out in all three Baltic countries during 2015-2016.

Miki Malul (p)

There has been a significant increase in the percentage of women participating in the work force. Nevertheless, across all cultures and at all times, the labor market has been segregated by sex to varying degrees (Rau and Wazienski, 1999). While researchers differ over the causes of segregation by sex in the work place, there is general agreement about its pervasiveness and persistence (Reskin and Roos, 1990; Blau and Kahn, 1995, 2003; Albrecht et al., 2003; Kumlin, 2007).
Among industrialized countries, gender can explain differences in salary between people with the same skills, experience and education. Despite the improvement in women's education and the on-the-job experience they have gained, women are paid less, promoted slowly and are less likely to reach the top ranks that are accorded power and authority.
This paper’s innovation is the introduction of a misperception about the gender gap. The existence of a gender gap is well documented in the literature with regard to wages, working hours, unemployment, management positions, and education. We asked a representative sample of 500 Israelis what they thought the gender gap was. Then we compared their perceptions from their questionnaires to the real data. We found a significant misperception regarding reality in almost all of the parameters. We also found that men and women differ significantly in their misperceptions.