Jonas Vlachos

Stockholm University | SU · Department of Economics

When COVID-19 reached Sweden, upper-secondary students (ages 17–19) transitioned to remote instruction, while lower-secondary schools (ages 14–16) remained open. We use this setting as a natural experiment to analyze how modes of instruction affect student mental health. We find a 4.4 percent decrease in mental health care use from remote instructi...

Background School closures used to contain the COVID-19 pandemic may have negative impacts on students' mental health but credible evidence is scarce. Sweden moved upper-secondary students to remote learning but, as the only country in the OECD, kept schools at lower levers open throughout the pandemic. Methods Using nationwide register data, we es...

Significance Many countries closed schools during the pandemic to contain the spread of SARS-CoV-2. Sweden closed upper-secondary schools, while lower-secondary schools remained open, allowing for an evaluation of school closures. This study analyzes the impact of school closures on the spread of SARS-CoV-2 by comparing groups exposed and not expos...

To reduce the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 most countries closed schools, despite uncertainty if school closures are an effective containment measure. At the onset of the pandemic, Swedish upper secondary schools moved to online instruction while lower secondary school remained open. This allows for a comparison of parents and teachers differently ex...

Sweden has a school voucher system with universal coverage and full acceptance of corporate providers. Using a value added approach, we find that students at upper-secondary voucher schools on average score 0.06 standard deviations lower on externally graded standardized tests in first year core courses. The negative impact is larger among lower ac...

We study the intergenerational transmission of cognitive and noncognitive abilities using population data and correct for measurement error in abilities using two sets of instruments. The results show that previous estimates are biased downward and that once measurement error is corrected for, the correlation in noncognitive ability is close to tha...

We document a substantial decline in cognitive and social interactive abilities and in GPAs among entering teachers. Then, using matched student-teacher data, we find that teacher abilities have a negligible impact on average student achievement. This finding hides interesting heterogeneities. In particular, an increase in teachers' cognitive (soci...

We estimate the impact of individual principals on school outcomes by using panel data that allow us to track principals over time. We find that individual principals have a substantive impact on school policies, working conditions, and student outcomes. In particular, students who attend a school that has a one standard deviation better principal...

We study the impact on criminal activity from a large scale Swedish reform of vocational upper secondary education, extending programs from two to three years and adding more general theoretical content. The reform directly concerns age groups where criminal activity is high and students who are highly overrepresented among criminal offenders. The...

We study the intergenerational transmission of cognitive and non-cognitive abilities between parents and sons, using population-wide enlistment data. Conscripts are evaluated at the same age and with comparable methods across cohorts, and we correct for measurement error bias in fathers’ ability measures by using their brothers’ abilities as instru...

Abstract We develop a theoretical oligopoly model to study how international differences in profit and capital gains taxes affect foreign acquisitions. Reductions in foreign profit taxes tend to trigger inefficient foreign acquisitions, while reductions in foreign capital gains taxes may trigger efficient foreign acquisitions. Foreign acquisitions...

This paper studies determinants of income inequality using a newly assembled panel of 16 countries over the entire twentieth century. We focus on three groups of income earners: the rich (P99–100), the upper middle class (P90–99), and the rest of the population (P0–90). The results show that periods of high economic growth disproportionately increa...

A fundamental problem in all political systems is that the people in power may extract rents to the detriment of the general public. In a democracy, electoral competition and information provided by the media may keep such rent extraction at bay. We develop a simple model where rents are decreasing in the degree of political competition and voter i...

Analyzing a panel that matches public firms with worker-level data, we find that managerial entrenchment affects workers' pay. CEOs with more control pay their workers more, but financial incentives through cash flow rights ownership mitigate such behavior. Entrenched CEOs pay more to employees closer to them in the corporate hierarchy, geographica...

The paper discusses the reasons for supporting international trade finance during a liquidity crisis. Targeted interventions are justified when prices are rigid and sellers insist on immediate payment due to fears of strategic default. In this case, buyers who reject the seller's offer fail to internalize the seller's benefit from additional liquid...

Teachers are increasingly being drawn from the lower parts of the general ability distribution, but it is not clear how this affects student achievement. We track the position of entering teachers in population-wide cognitive and non-cognitive ability distributions using school grades and draft records from Swedish registers. The impact on student...

Theories of taste-based discrimination predict that competitive pressures will drive discriminatory behavior out of the market. Using detailed matched employer-employee data, we analyze how firm takeovers and product market competition are related to the gender composition of the firm’s workforce and the gender wage gap. Using a difference-in-diffe...

This paper examines the long-run determinants of the evolution of top income shares. Using a newly assembled panel of 16 developed countries over the entire twentieth century, we find that financial development disproportionately boosts top incomes. This effect appears to be particularly strong during the early stages of a country’s development. Ec...

The Swedish referendum on the euro in September 2003 is an exceptional event for researchers of monetary unions and of European economic integration. Voters chose between maintaining the domestic currency, the krona, and replacing it with the euro, the single currency of the European Union. The referendum revealed significant dividing lines between...

We show that, in the case when innovations are for sale, increased product market competition, captured by reduced product market profits, can increase the incentives for innovations. The reason is that the incentive to innovate depends on the acquisition price which, in turn, might increase despite firms in the market making lower profits. We also...

Since unification, the debate about Germany's poor economic performance has focused on supply-side weaknesses, and the associated reform agenda sought to make low-skill labour markets more flexible. We question this diagnosis using three lines of argument. First, effective restructuring of the supply side in the core advanced industries was carried...

We model and experimentally examine the board structure-performance relationship. We examine single-tiered boards, two-tiered boards, insider-controlled boards, and outsider-controlled boards. We find that even insider-controlled boards frequently adopt institutionally preferred rather than self-interested policies. Two-tiered boards adopt institut...

It has been argued that the public sector is an insurance against otherwise uninsurable risks. If that is the case, it is reasonable to expect the public sector to be larger in regions where the private labour-market is risky. Using data from Swedish municipalities, this paper reports that labour-market risk has a substantial impact on public emplo...

The growth effects of international financial liberalization and integration are investigated using the methodology and data developed by Rajan and Zingales (1998). The main result is that industries highly dependent on external financing do not experience higher growth in value added in countries with liberalized financial markets. Liberalization...

In this paper, we empirically address the hypothesis that there is a relationship between the supply of human capital and the rate and direction of skill-biased technical change (SBTC). Using country- and industry-level data on OECD countries, we find R&D to be positively related to the supply of human capital. There is, however, no indication that...

Due to underlying technological and organizational differences, industries differ in their need for external finance. Since services provided by the financial sector are largely immobile across countries, the pattern of industrial specialization should be influenced by the level of financial development. Among OECD countries we find a strong causal...

By combining new data on bilateral asset holdings with data on securities regulation in an empirical gravity model, it is found that bilateral differences in securities regulation lead to decreased portfolio holdings. Hence, regulatory harmonization can foster financial integration. The results are especially strong for equity holdings. It is verif...

The regional voting pattern of the Swedish European Union (EU)-membership referendum is analyzed to determine voters’ preferences over two fiscal regimes: an autonomous Sweden, or Sweden as part of the EU. A major difference between these regimes is that autonomy gives greater national discretion to handle risk-sharing and redistribution between re...

This study analyzes the effects of right-wing extremism on the well-being of immigrants based on data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) for the years 1984 to 2006 merged with state-level information on election outcomes. The results show that the life satisfaction of immigrants is significantly reduced if right-wing extremism in the nativ...

On Sunday September 14, 2003, voters in Sweden went to the polls to answer the question: "Do you think that Sweden should introduce the euro as its official currency?" Three options existed: Yes, No, and a blank ballot. The voters decided whether to maintain the domestic currency, the krona, which was introduced as the official currency unit in 187...

The regional voting pattern of the Swedish European Union (EU)-membership referendum is analyzed to determine voters’ preferences over two fiscal regimes: an autonomous Sweden, or Sweden as part of the EU. A major difference between these regimes is that autonomy gives greater national discretion to handle risk-sharing and redistribution between re...

If protectionist trade policies aim to insure domestic industries against swings in world market prices, the development of financial markets could lead to trade liberalization. Likewise, trade liberalization could lead to the development of financial markets that help agents diversify the added risks. In this paper, we empirically address the hypo...

Due to underlying technological and organizational differences, industries differ in their need for external finance. Since services provided by the financial sector are largely immobile across countries, the pattern of industrial specialization should be influenced by the degree of financial development. We find this effect to be strong. In fa...

Business cycles in different regions of the United States tend to synchronize. This study investigates the reasons behind this synchronization of business cycles and the consequent formation of a national business cycle. Trade between regions may not be strong enough for one region to "drive" business cycle fluctuations in another region. This stud...

It has long been argued that trade restrictions can be motivated by insurance considerations in the absence of full risk diversification. Recent theoretical research suggests that markets for risk can alleviate resistance to reform and protectionist lobby group pressure. We empirically address the hypothesis that institutions reducing risk can fac...

RAPPORT 2010:21 Institutet för arbetsmarknadspolitisk utvärdering (IFAU) är ett forskningsinsti-tut under Arbetsmarknadsdepartementet med säte i Uppsala. IFAU ska främja, stödja och genomföra vetenskapliga utvärderingar. Uppdraget omfattar: effek-ter av arbetsmarknadspolitik, arbetsmarknadens funktionssätt, arbetsmarknads-effekter av åtgärder inom...