Jaakko Meriläinen
Hello, and welcome to my website!
My name is Jaakko, and I am an Assistant Professor of Economics at the Department of Economics at Stockholm School of Economics. I am also affiliated with the House of Governance and Public Policy and the KAB Center for Governance.
The main focus of my research is on (empirical) political economics. I am broadly interested in the nature of democratic governance, and economic and political development. Most of my 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.
At Stockholm School of Economics, I teach Econometrics to master's students. In the past, I have taught Political Economics at different levels and undergraduate research seminars. I 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 I worked between the years 2019 and 2023.
I obtained my PhD from the IIES at Stockholm University in May 2019. Before that, I studied at the University of Helsinki. I have been a Docent at my alma mater since February 2023.
I am a first-generation college graduate, dad of Mateo, husband of Keyla, and an amateur musician, among other things.
News
How does exposure to violent class conflict shape electoral outcomes? We study this question with Matti Mitrunen in our paper "The Loser's Long Curse: How Exposure to Class Conflict Shapes Election Outcomes" which was recently accepted for publication in Comparative Political Studies. Read the paper here.
The policy positions of voters and elected officials do not always coincide with each other. We present an illustrative example of this using Swedish survey data and formalize one theoretical rationale in our paper "Vox Populi, Vox Dei? Tacit Collusion in Politics" which will appear in the November issue of Economics & Politics.
"Pre-Electoral Coalitions and the Distribution of Political Power" was accepted for publication in Public Choice. The paper demonstrates that pre-electoral coalitions - which many think can distort the electoral process and dilute party ideology - can actually lead to broader representation of voters' preferences. You can read it here.
Our paper "Famine, Inequality, and Conflict" is now available in the August issue of Journal of the European Economic Association. Read it here.
I have moved to Stockholm School of Economics. My new email address is jaakko.merilainen@hhs.se.