We had a great pleasure to hear Senior Economist Harri Pönkä from the Bank of Finland. He gave us very broad understanding on the differencies of two quite similar size economies Ireland and Finland. However, two countries differ quite a lot in demography as well as in GDP. This topic is particularly interesting now that Ireland is one of the fastest growing economies within EU while Finland is suffering of zero growth. 

Ireland clearly benefits on close trans-Atlantic relations as well as the language and low corporate tax but there is much more in this. Their government has taken some rather drastic steps to tackle the financial crisis few years ago. They also clearly identified few industries of future potential - call and data centers of big ICT companies as well as the pharmaceutical industry. These industries has been supported and they have brought lot of companies and talented personnel into the country. At the same time Finland has tried to support many different industries and thus the support has probably split into too small "rivers". Finland is highly dependent on innovation and exports and would need more skills and investments on this. 

More details can be found in Harri Pönkä's presentation by request to tarjah.uitti@gmail.com