Jens Dietrichson

• PhD in Economics
• Researcher at VIVE - The Danish Center for Social Science Research

Objectives This is the protocol for a Campbell systematic review. The objectives are as follows: The first objective is to find and describe machine and statistical learning (ML) methods designed for moderator meta‐analysis. The second objective is to find and describe applications of such ML methods in moderator meta‐analyses of health, medical, a...

Reducing socioeconomic health inequalities is a key goal of most health systems. A challenge in this regard is that healthcare providers may have incentives to avoid or undertreat patients who are relatively costly to treat. Due to the socioeconomic gradient in health, individuals with low socioeconomic status (SES) are especially likely to be nega...

This is the protocol for a Campbell systematic review. The objectives are as follows. The aim of the present review is to synthesize evidence on the effectiveness of interventions for at‐risk families aimed at preventing the out‐of‐home placement of children or increasing the likelihood that children are reunited with their birth families following...

Reducing socioeconomic health inequalities is a key goal of most health systems. When care providers are paid prospectively, e.g., by a fixed sum per patient, existing inequalities may be sustained by the incentives to undertreat relatively unhealthy patients. To counter this, prospective payments are often risk-adjusted based on observable patient...

This is the protocol for a Campbell systematic review. Our primary objective for this systematic review is to examine if preschool and school‐based interventions aimed at improving language, literacy, and/or mathematical skills increase children's and adolescents' executive functions. As a secondary objective, we will examine how the effects of lan...

Background Worldwide, a large number of infants, toddlers, and preschoolers are enroled in formal non‐parental early childhood education or care (ECEC). Theoretically, lower adult/child ratios (fewer children per adult) and smaller group sizes are hypothesised to be associated with positive child outcomes in ECEC. A lower adult/child ratio and a sm...

Team collaborations in which each member’s output is critical to the overall success present organizations with difficult coordination problems. Despite the need for communication in such situations, team members often fail to share essential information. To examine why team communication and coordination fail, we develop a formal model with bounde...

Market frictions, such as imperfect information or hassle costs, may reduce benefits from market incentives in healthcare settings. We use data from two randomised policy interventions in a Swedish region, which improved the access to provider information and reduced the switching costs of one percent of the adult population and of a sample of new...

Background School‐based service‐learning is a teaching strategy that explicitly links community service to academic instruction. It is distinctive from traditional voluntarism or community service in that it intentionally connects service activities with curriculum concepts and includes structured time for reflection. Service learning, by connectin...

This is the protocol for a Campbell review. Our primary research question is: What are the effects of different testing frequencies on student achievement? Our secondary research question is: What are the effects of different testing frequencies on measures of students' testing anxiety? Our third research question is: How are the effects of differe...

We used a mixed-methods approach to evaluate a professional development intervention where researchers, preschool teachers, and assistants collaborated to develop ways to improve adult-child interaction. The quantitative evaluation used a cluster-randomized trial where we randomly assigned sixteen preschool units in a Danish municipality to either...

This study examined a literacy program that targeted students most at risk of reading difficulties in kindergarten and first grade of 12 Swedish schools. The program used multi-sensory learning methods that focused on phonological awareness and phonics, and was delivered during 10 weeks over 30–35 sessions by teachers in a one-to-one or one-to-two...

Background Low levels of numeracy and literacy skills are associated with a range of negative outcomes later in life, such as reduced earnings and health. Obtaining information about effective interventions for children with or at risk of academic difficulties is therefore important. Objectives The main objective was to assess the effectiveness of...

Consumer choice policies may improve the matching of consumers and providers, and may spur competition over quality dimensions relevant to consumers. However, the gains from choice may fail to materialise in markets characterised by information frictions and switching costs. We use two large-scale randomised field experiments in primary health care...

What are the long‐term effects of universal preschool programs on child outcomes? We review 26 studies using natural experiments to estimate the effects of universal preschool programs for children aged 0–6 years on child outcomes measured from third grade to adulthood. Studies comparing universal preschool with a mix of parental, family, and priva...

Policies aiming to spur quality competition among health care providers are ubiquitous, but their impact on quality is ex ante ambiguous, and credible empirical evidence is lacking in many contexts. This study contributes to the sparse literature on competition and primary care quality by examining recent competition enhancing reforms in Sweden. Th...

This is the protocol for a Campbell review. The objectives are as follows: To synthesize data from studies to assess the impact of adult/child ratio and group size in ECEC on measures of process characteristics of quality of care and on child outcome measures.

Background: The Scandinavian countries have a long history of implementing social interventions, but the interventions have not been examined using randomised controlled trials until relatively recently compared with countries like the United States and the United Kingdom. Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the history of randomised...

Background: Providing equal access to health care is an important objective in most health care systems. It is especially pertinent in systems like the Swedish primary care market, where private providers are free to establish themselves in any part of the country. To improve equity in access to care, 15 out 21 county councils in Sweden have imple...

Table B.1: Other antibiotics P4P indicators in treated counties Figure C.1: (a) Reproduction of Figure 2 in Section 5 of paper; (b) Same, but shift back regression line cut‐off one year. Figure C.2: (a) Longer regression period; (b) Same, but shift back regression line cut‐off one year. Figure C.3: (a) Unweighted data; (b) Excluding Stockholm count...

Antibiotic resistance is a major threat to public health worldwide. As the healthcare sector's use of antibiotics is an important contributor to the development of resistance, it is crucial that physicians only prescribe antibiotics when needed and that they choose narrow-spectrum antibiotics, which act on fewer bacteria types, when possible. Inapp...

Socioeconomic status is a major predictor of educational achievement. This systematic review and meta-analysis seeks to identify effective academic interventions for elementary and middle school students with low socioeconomic status. Included studies have used a treatment-control group design, were performed in OECD and EU countries, and measured...

Central government bailouts of local governments are commonly viewed as a recipe for local fiscal indiscipline, as local governments learn that the center will come to the rescue in times of trouble. However, little is known about the consequences of bailouts granted conditional on local governments first making efforts to improve the situation. We...

Conflicts of interest within hierarchic government organizations regarding the importance of fiscal discipline create the need for institutions that curb the bargaining power of units in charge of implementing policy and align their incentives to the interests of the whole organization. We examine this general public sector problem by collecting un...

How does costly communication affect organizational coordination? This paper develops a model ofcostly communication based on the weakest-link game and boundedly rational agents. Solving for the stochastically stable states, we find that communication increases the possibilities for efficient coordination compared to a setting where agents cannot c...

Why are coordination problems common when public sector organizations share responsibilities, and what can be done to mitigate such problems? This paper uses a multi-task principal-agent model to examine two related reasons: the incentives to coordinate resource allocation and the difficulties of measuring performance. The analysis shows that when...

Central government bailouts of local governments are commonly viewed as a recipe for local �fiscal indiscipline, as local governments learn that the center will come to the rescue in times of trouble. Little is known however about whether such tendencies can be dampened if assistance is conditional on the local governments' own fiscal efforts. We e...

Conflicts of interest between planning and implementing branches create enforcement problems in the implementation of public sector budgets. We model the budget process as a dynamic game, which highlights the interplay between the institutional structure and players' preferences. Using this framework, we collect unique data on budget institutions a...

This report presents a comparative study of German and Swedish ODA to Namibia. The objectives are to outline the ODA policies and practices of the two countries and to analyse the effects the different approaches may have on recipient ownership and sustainability. The case study in Namibia is made of six projects from Sweden and German respectively...

Abstract The subject of this thesis is introduction of competition in public services and its effects on public sector efficiency generally, and the Swedish compulsory school specifically. The issue is studied in a theoretical framework of institutional and transaction cost theory. A concentration ratio competition measure is developed, covering pu...