Pirkko Aulin-Ahmavaara and Hanna-Leena Männistö awarded Eino H. Laurila national income medal

The Eino H. Laurila national income medal for 2009 has been awarded to PhD Pirkko Aulin-Ahmavaara and MScEcon Hanna-Leena Männistö.

PhD Aulin-Ahmavaara is an internationally recognised researcher especially in the areas of productivity development, human capital and input-output studies. Her articles have been published in numerous international publications. She is on the editorial board of both the Review of Income and Wealth journal and the Economic Systems Research journal. Within the EU KLEMS project on productivity in the European Union Ms Aulin-Ahmavaara contributed actively to the creation of an internationally comparable database on productivity. She has also advanced general knowledge about national accounts with her articles and teaching.

Ms Aulin-Ahmavaara has been employed by the ILO in Geneva, by the Finnish Ministry of Labour as Director of Statistics, and by Statistics Finland. She successfully defended her doctoral dissertation at the University of Oulu in 1987. Pirkko Aulin-Ahmavaara lectures in economics at the University of Helsinki.

During her career, MScEcon Hanna-Leena Männistö has borne the responsibility for key tasks in the development of Bank of Finland macroeconomic models. Her work input in the exploitation of these models for economic forecasts has been highly significant. Ms Männistö has based her work on the system of national accounts. She has written numerous model documents, articles and economic reviews.

The medals will be handed over to Pirkko Aulin-Ahmavaara and Hanna-Leena Männistö at the meeting of the Finnish Economic Association at the House of Estates, Snellmanininkatu 9 - 11, Helsinki, Finland, at 5 pm on Monday, 19 October 2009.

The Eino H. Laurila national income medal is awarded as recognition of noteworthy work to advance the development and application of economic descriptive systems, and promote knowledge about them. A further aim of the medal is to nurture interaction between economic research and practical work on the compilation of statistics. Decisions about awarding of the medal are made by the Ekonomiska Samfundet in Finland, the Finnish Statistical Society, the Finnish Economic Association, Statistics Finland and the Yrjö Jahnsson Foundation. The first medal was awarded to Professor Eino H. Laurila in 1993 for his extensive work on the development of Finnish national accounts.

Inquiries:
Mr Ari Tyrkkö, Statistics Finland, +358 1734 3261; email: firstname.lastname@stat.fi