RSSE: Jaakko Meriläinen (Stockholm School of Economics) Long-Run Consequences of Marxism in the Classroom: Evidence from an Experiment

It is our pleasure that Jaakko Meriläinen (Stockholm School of Economics) will present on Thursday, April 17, 2025, at 12:45 in room RB437 about the topic “Long-Run Consequences of Marxism in the Classroom: Evidence from an Experiment”.

Registration is not required and anyone who would like to attend is warmly invited.

It is also possible to participate online via MS Teams at this link. In case of any connection issues, please contact lubomir.cingl@vse.cz.

ABSTRACT: This paper investigates the individual-level economic impacts of Marxist-Leninist education. We explore the long-term effects of a rogue educational experiment that, between 1973 and 1975, exposed fifth graders in one Finnish municipality to a biased history and social studies curriculum influenced by Soviet ideas. The purpose of the experiment was to study the formation of a “functioning worldview” in school. Using comprehensive register data to track individuals over time and a generalized difference-in-differences approach, we demonstrate that exposed children had significantly lower incomes in adulthood compared to their non-exposed peers. We show that this effect partly stems from the exposed individuals working less and choosing ideologically more left-leaning and lower-paying occupations. We do not detect any substantial impact on later educational attainment. We further do not find effects on later cognitive ability or achievement striving and other economically valuable personality traits using army enlistment data. Our findings highlight the potential long-lasting consequences of early exposure to ideological content in classrooms on an individual’s later economic outcomes and behavior.

BIO: He is an Assistant Professor of Economics at the Department of Economics at Stockholm School of Economics (SSE). He is also affiliated with the House of Governance and Public Policy and the KAB Center for Governance. The main focus of his research is on (empirical) political economics. He is broadly interested in the nature of democratic governance, and understanding economic and political development through the lens of history. Most of his work studies questions related to political representation, electoral politics, and historical political economy, combining micro-econometric methods with contemporary and historical data from both developed and developing contexts. He was awarded with the SSE Corporate Partners’ Research Award in 2024. At SSE, he teachs Econometrics to master’s students. In the past, he has taught Political Economics at different levels and undergraduate research seminars. He had the honor of being awarded for Excellence in Teaching in 2022 and for Excellence in Undergraduate Supervision in 2023 by the Department of Economics at ITAM in Mexico City where he worked between the years 2019 and 2023. In Spring 2024, he was also a visiting professor at the Master’s in Institutions and Political Economy program at the University of Barcelona.