News 28 Feb 2018
Eino H. Laurila national income medal awarded to Helka Jokinen, Pasi Sorjonen and Lauri Uotila
The 2017 Eino H. Laurila national income medal has been awarded to Helka Jokinen, Master of Science in Economics and Business Administration, to Pasi Sorjonen, Doctor of Science in Economics and Business Administration, and to Lauri Uotila, Master of Economics. The medals are awarded in recognition of their active work in promoting the use of national accounts and knowledge about them.
The medals will be presented at the House of Estates in Helsinki on 28 February 2018 in connection with a joint seminar of the Finnish Economic Association, the OECD and the Ministry of Finance that begins at 3.30 pm.
Helka Jokinen, Master of Science in Economics and Business Administration, has worked in important positions at the Bank of Finland and the European Central Bank. She has been employed at various Bank of Finland departments as a researcher, economist, advisor, the department head of the statistics department and chief of the statistics unit. She has regularly written articles to the Bank of Finland’s publications, especially on the development of the monetary and currency markets. Ms Helka Jokinen played a central role in creating joint bank reporting used by various authorities. She also actively developed sensible distribution of work in statistics production between authorities, as a result of which quarterly financial accounts were moved to Statistics Finland as part of the System of National Accounts.
Ms Helka Jokinen acted as the representative of the Bank of Finland in the Statistics Committee of the ECB for a long time. She has also worked in the statistics department of the ECB where she participated in developing joint monetary and bank statistics for the euro area and prepared regulations required by them to collect data from monetary financial institutions. She has also acted as the representative of the Bank of Finland in the joint Committee for Monetary, Financial and Balance of Payments Statistics of Eurostat and the ECB.
Pasi Sorjonen, Doctor of Science in Economics and Business Administration, defended his doctoral dissertation on Essays on Dividends and Taxes at the Helsinki School of Economics in 2000. He has worked at the Research Institute of the Finnish Economy (ETLA) as a head of forecasting and as an economist at Nordea Markets, where he has been mainly responsible for monitoring, forecasting and commenting on the Finnish economy, as well as development of methods. In his work, he has familiarised himself in the various aspects of the national accounts and their use in economic forecasting.
Mr Sorjonen is an active lecturer. He has annually lectured on forecasting and monitoring the economy at the Aalto University School of Economics. He has regularly visited Statistics Finland’s courses on national accounts and how to use indices to present the viewpoint of users. He has also acted as a teacher in Nordea’s personnel training programmes.
Lauri Uotila is a Master of Economics. He has worked at Statistics Finland and from 1982 onwards at Danske Bank and its predecessors. Mr Uotila played a key role in developing the modern quarterly accounts in the 1970s. At Danske Bank, he has worked as an economist and chief economist, as well as a head advisor. He still works as a part-time advisor.
Mr Uotila has used the framework of the national accounts and made it known. He is regarded as an active and well-liked lecturer who can explain things in an understandable way. In addition to his actual job, Mr Uotila has lectured, for example, at the University of Helsinki and other universities, as well as various training centres. He is also known for making statements that differ from what is presented in the mainstream media, where he emphasises the facts presented in statistics.
The Eino H. Laurila national income medal is awarded in recognition of noteworthy work to advance national economy research and particularly 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 statistical work. Decisions about awarding of the medal are made by the Ekonomiska Samfundet i 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.
Further information:
Olli Savela, Senior Statistician, Statistics Finland,
+358 29 551 3316; email: firstname.lastname@stat.fi