Economic Resilience (EconRe) research team

How is resilience realised at individual, organisational and regional levels?

Our resilience research focuses on resilience at different levels: individual, community, regional, national, and global levels. We are interested in how regional factors affect the regions' resilience and recovery, i.e., the ability to adapt to and endure industry-specific and general economic shocks and fluctuations. At the individual level, our interest is to study the connection between an individual's tendency to resist change, their resilience, and personality traits. Furthermore, we examine how digital solutions can strengthen the ability of people, organisations, businesses, and regions to adapt to economic change. In our research, we combine machine learning methods, like topic modeling, surveys, and experimental research methods.

• Riepponen, T., Moilanen, M. & Simonen, J. (2023). Themes of resilience in the economics literature: A topic modeling approach. Regional Science Policy and Practice, 15(2), 326–356.
• Simonen, J., Herala, J. & Svento, R. (2020). Creative destruction and creative resilience: Restructuring of the Nokia dominated high-tech sector in the Oulu region. Regional Science Policy and Practice, 12(5), 931–953.

How do individual and regional factors affect intra- and inter-regional labour mobility?

Our research focuses on the high-technology labour markets in Finland. We are interested in individual, regional and institutional factors that affect intra- and inter-regional labour mobility. We have studied labour mobility, e.g., in different stages of the industry's life cycle. Currently, our work focuses on post-displacement mobility and long-run mobility patterns. Studies are based on micro data managed by Statistics Finland.

• Simonen, J., McCann, P., Karhinen, S. & Svento, R. (2024). The drivers of intra- and inter-regional labour mobility over the industry life cycle of the high-tech sector. Journal of Regional Science, 64(5), 1736–1759.
• Simonen, J., Svento, R., Karhinen, S. & McCann, P. (2018). Inter-regional and inter-sectoral labour mobility and the industry life cycle: A panel data analysis of Finnish high technology sector. In B. Biagi, A. Faggian, I. Rajbhandari & V. A. Venhorst (Eds.), New frontiers in interregional migration research, Advances in Spatial Science (pp. 151–179). Cham: Springer.

How do emotions, biases and personality shape our behavior?

Our research in experimental economics explores the roles of emotions, biases, and personality in shaping behaviour across online labour markets, laboratory experiments, and field settings. In online labour markets, we investigate the complex web of factors influencing individual productivity. We aim to understand what drives online work behaviours and how informal norms develop and persist within these digital workplaces. More broadly, our work examines how psychological factors such as personality, mood, and emotions interact with economic decision-making to shape behaviour in these environments.

We study economic behaviour through controlled experiments, testing theoretical predictions and uncovering causal relationships in decision-making. We also explore how individuals respond to external shocks, using these responses to reveal the mechanisms underlying behaviour. By combining lab and field approaches, we can isolate key drivers of behaviour, track how effects spread between individuals, and better understand how decisions at the micro level influence larger economic outcomes.

Throughout our work, psychological traits such as personality, resilience, and openness to change are central. Our goal is not only to identify behavioural patterns but also to explain how differences in personality, demographics, and life experience shape individual decision-making.

• Mourelatos, E., Simonen, J., Hosio, S., Likhobaba, D. & Ustalov, D. (2024). How has the COVID-19 pandemic shaped behavior in crowdsourcing? The role of online labor market training. Journal of Business Economics.
• Mourelatos, E. (2023). Does mood affect sexual and gender discrimination in hiring choices? Evidence from online experiments. Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics, 106: 102069.
• Manganari, E., Mourelatos, E., Michos, N. & Dimara, E. (2022). Harnessing the power of defaults now and forever? The effects of mood and personality. International Journal of Electronic Commerce, 26(4), 472–496.

How do global megatrends, together with increasing interest in Arctic natural resources, influence the growth of Arctic regions and their capacity to adapt to these changes?

The Arctic is undergoing rapid economic, environmental, and geopolitical change. Over the past decade, interest in the region and its natural resources has grown substantially. Global megatrends, such as the growing role of the service sector in the economy and increasing digitalisation also affect the growth of the Arctic regions. Unprecedented challenges posed by the current geopolitical turmoil have also challenged the development of Arctic regions.

Resilience and sustainable development of society in the context of green and digital transitions, especially at the community level, is one of our research topics. We are interested in how individual preferences and collective decision-making regarding regional development pathways affect regional resilience. Our goal is to provide valuable information about successful and less successful practices in the Arctic regions and thereby provide policy recommendations for the future. Our research also examines regional and cross-border smart specialisation strategies and their role in fostering innovation and promoting regional economic growth in the Arctic.

• Simonen, J., Moilanen, M., Kotila, J., Lohtander, J., Westin, L., Hersinger, A., Østbye, S., Riepponen, T. & Svento, R. (2023). The COVID-19 pandemic and regional economic resilience in northern Finland, Norway and Sweden – bouncing back or not? Arctic Yearbook 2023, 246–269.
• Moilanen, M., Østbye, S. & Simonen, J. (2021). Machine learning and the identification of Smart Specialisation thematic networks in Arctic Scandinavia. Regional Studies, 56(9), 1429-1441.
• Simonen, J., Moilanen, M., Westin, L., Hersinger, A., Østbye, S., Riepponen, T. & Svento, R. (2021). The COVID-19 pandemic and regional economic resilience in Northern Finland, Norway, and Sweden – A pre-study.
• Report: Cross-border cooperation on innovation - A joint taskforce

Community resilience at the intersection of economic, social, and environmental capital

Master's thesis by Nea Kunnari

Resilience describes the system’s ability to respond to changes, shocks, and disruptions in its operating environment. This thesis focuses on defining community resilience at the intersection of economic, social, and environmental capital. Strong resilience is conceptualized by how well the economic, social, and environmental capitals of the community are developed: in strongly resilient communities all three of the capitals are well-developed, and most importantly, the capitals are balanced. Balancing community capitals can be difficult, since communities consist of heterogenous individuals, who can have differing preferences and values regarding community development. In this thesis, the tools of social choice theory are employed to study resilient decision-making, which requires deliberate effort and long-term commitment due to its crucial role in determining both current and future resilience. The results of this thesis can be used to guide community development to build resilience to different disruptions.

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The effect of repeated shocks on individual competitiveness: an experiment

Master's thesis by Tarif Tahmeed Khan

Individual competitiveness, or the general tendency to self-select into competitive environments, has gained growing attention in the field of behavioral and experimental economics for its ability to predict labor market outcomes, career choices, as well as education choices. It is also argued to be an underlying factor behind the underrepresentation of women in the labor market. The thesis studies how repeated shocks can potentially disrupt willingness to compete for the two genders using a real-effort task in an incentivized online labor market experiment. The results show negative effects on performance and willingness to compete for both genders, with women being slightly more affected due to the large difference in confidence. While the experimental design raises questions regarding external validity, it highlights opportunities for future research on measuring resilience using real-effort tasks. Moreover, it can be further extended to induce shocks with alternate methods and of varying magnitudes.

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Exploring gig economy literature: a topic modelling approach

Master's thesis by Joona Lohtander

Gig economy refers to the growing phenomenon of work consisting of short-term tasks, which are paid per task. The gig economy also often offers flexible working arrangements. The gig economy is a complex and evolving phenomenon and understanding the growing literature on it can be challenging. In this Master’s thesis topic modelling is used to find latent topics in the scientific literature on the gig economy. Furthermore, trends in the topics are assessed and opportunities for future research are identified. The trends in the distribution of topics seem to highlight the recent emergence of “local gig platforms”, in which work is mediated through online platforms but done on-site.

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Asymmetric venture capital fund and regional resilience (Thesis in Finnish)

Master's thesis by Jemina Kotila

Resilience refers to the ability of different actors to anticipate, recover from and adapt to various disturbances. This thesis studies the effects of regional venture capital (VC) fund on regional resilience. Besides regional factors, regional resilience is comprised of resilient workers and firms. Therefore, in this thesis, resilience is also studied at the individual and organisational levels. Regional VC fund seems to benefit the region in many ways through entrepreneurship. One of its most important effects relates to the development of a vital startup-ecosystem. VC fund enables the start of new businesses and the spread of information. It also helps firms to attract funding from other sources. All this development promotes regional resilience.

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Entrepreneurial risk and resilience

Master's thesis by Essi Maalismaa

This thesis studies the risks of entrepreneurship and the resilience of entrepreneurs. Risks cannot be avoided in entrepreneurship. Thus, studying the risk attitudes of entrepreneurs and the effect risk attitudes have on their success is crucial. Risks also make resilience important as it is vital for the entrepreneur to be able to recover quickly from any adverse situations and setbacks that the risks might result. Entrepreneurs are often considered resilient because the nature of entrepreneurship requires ability to survive challenging circumstances and learn from them to be better prepared in the future. However, there is no evidence of all entrepreneurs being highly resilient or resilience guaranteeing entrepreneurial success. Resilience rather increases the probability of becoming an entrepreneur and assists in survival during difficult times. Because risk attitudes and resilience are extremely difficult to measure, the future research should not be focused solely on the measurement but rather on how to support and improve entrepreneurs’ risk management and resilience.

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Jaakko Simonen works as a professor at the Department of Economics, Accounting and Finance in Oulu Business School. His current research focuses on studying resilience at various levels (individual, organizational and regional), regional smart specialization, the inter-regional and inter-sectoral labour mobility and roles of the industrial structure and innovation ecosystem in regional growth.

Cross-border cooperation in the arctic regions is also one of his research interests. In 2018-2019, he was the chair of the cooperation project between the Arctic 5 universities and respective cities, known as The Cross-Border Cooperation on Innovation – A Joint Taskforce. He has published, e.g., in Regional Studies, Journal of Urban Economics, Papers in Regional Science, The Annals of Regional Science and International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business.

During his career, he has been working as a visiting researcher at the University of Reading, UK, the University of Waikato, New Zealand and the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. He has been involved in the administrative duties of the University of Oulu (Research Assessment Exercise 2007) as well as in Oulu Business School (e.g., AACSB Accreditation project). He holds a Doctor of Science degree in Economics from the Oulu Business School.

See Jaakko's researcher profile.

Vaggelis Mourelatos (PhD, Department of Economics, University of Patras; Master’s degree in Business Engineering, National Technical University of Athens) is a researcher at the University of Oulu, Finland. His current research interests are in the areas of experimental economics, behavioural economics, online labour markets and micro-econometrics. He focuses on the determinants of online working behaviour, the emergence and enforcement of social norms, the role of preferences on labour market outcomes, and the effect of behavioural biases on discrimination. Vaggelis’ work has appeared in various journals such as Interacting with Computers, Behavior and Information Technology, Netnomics, and Southern East Journal of Economics.

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Jemina focuses on labour mobility from individual and regional perspectives. Mobility is a form of resilience against shocks related to work life, and Jemina is especially intrigued by how these unexpected events shape individual career paths. The main emphasis of Jemina’s research is to deepen our understanding of who are mobile individuals, how they are mobile and why they are mobile. In 2025, Jemina visited the Faculty of Spatial Sciences at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands for six months.

Jemina's Master's thesis (in Finnish)

Joona is a doctoral researcher focusing on behavioral and experimental economics. He studies how personalities and behavioral biases manifest in economic decisions made by individuals and groups. He is especially interested in decisions related to change. Joona aims to utilize insights from behavioral economics in promoting reforms and compromises.

Joona's researcher profile

Tarif's is a recent graduate with a Master’s degree in economics from Oulu Business School. His research interests are in labor economics, the economics of discrimination, behavioral economics, individual competitiveness, and online choice experiments. In the summer of 2023, Tarif designed an online labor market experiment for his master’s thesis to study how repeated shocks affect individual competitiveness. After graduation, he shortly worked at the VATT Institute for Economic Research as a research assistant on a project exploring the impact of taxation on electric motor vehicles. At the moment, he is focusing on understanding the role of personality traits in decision making.

Nea is a recent graduate with a Master’s degree in Economics from Oulu Business School. She studies social resilience at the community and regional levels, especially in the context of the green transition. Her research interests are Arctic community resilience, regional development, and the role of personal values and decision-making in fostering resilience and a fair transition to a greener way of living.

Rauli Svento is professor emeritus of economics at the Department of Economics, Accounting and Finance in Oulu Business School. His main research interests are in environmental and energy economics, regional economics, and health economics. He is developing the creative resilience concept with the GenZ resilience team. He has headed the department and served as dean of the school and vice president of the university.

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• Report: Arctic 5 cities and COVID-19 pandemic - Return to workplaces
• Report: Arctic 5 cities and COVID-19 pandemic – Record-breaking summer for domestic tourism
• Report: Arctic 5 cities and COVID-19 pandemic - Change in visits to retail and recreation places
• Report: The COVID-19 pandemic in the Arctic 5 cities - Economic effects and recovery