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Reposted by Michael Vlassopoulos

Caroline Krafft @ckrafftc.bsky.social · 10/01/2025

"The Power of Language: Educational and Mental Health Impacts of Language Training for Refugee Children" by @semihtumen.bsky.social @mvlass.bsky.social and @jackiewahba.bsky.social #EconSky #MenaSky docs.iza.org/dp17593.pdf

The Power of Language:
Educational and Mental Health Impacts of
Language Training for Refugee Children*
This paper examines the causal impact of a large-scale Turkish language training program on
the academic performance, school participation, and mental well-being of Syrian refugee
children in T¨urkiye. Using rich administrative data and a staggered difference-in-differences
design, we find that the program led to improvements in Turkish language and Math
scores of refugee students, along with a significant reduction in their school absences. The
language gains and associated improvements in school outcomes are more pronounced for
younger refugee children with lower pre-program academic performance, which suggests
that early language interventions are more effective for integration. In addition, we provide
evidence that the language training program generated modest positive spillovers on
native students. Finally, we identify mental health as a potential key channel through which
the program enhanced educational outcomes, as alleviating language barriers improved
concentration, reduced anxiety, and decreased bullying. Our findings underline the critical
role of language training in improving refugee students’ educational outcomes and mental
well-being, and fostering social cohesion.

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Reposted by Michael Vlassopoulos

The Institute for Fiscal Studies @theifs.bsky.social · 09/12/2024

NEW #IFSWorkingPaper: Spillovers in criminal networks: Evidence from co-offender deaths Read Matthew Lindquist, Eleonora Patacchini, @mvlass.bsky.social and @yveszenou.bsky.social study on spillover effects within criminal networks by leveraging the deaths of co-offenders: buff.ly/4gl45t2

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Reposted by Michael Vlassopoulos

VoxDev @voxdev.bsky.social · 11/11/2024

🆕How a documentary film fostered interethnic harmony in Bangladesh Today on VoxDev @absidd.bsky.social (Royal Holloway), @mvlass.bsky.social (University of Southhampton) & Yves Zenou (Monash University) outline their latest research: voxdev.org/topic/how-do...

voxdev.org

How a documentary film fostered interethnic harmony in Bangladesh

A documentary film, shown to a majority group, portraying the daily lives, cultural practices, and socioeconomic struggles of a minority group in Bangladesh, increased prosociality and reduced complai...

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Michael Vlassopoulos @mvlass.bsky.social · 17/11/2023

Exciting opportunity! The Department of Economics at the University of Southampton is looking for a talented individual to join us as a Lecturer. We are particularly interested in candidates with interests in Applied Economics. Details here: jobs.soton.ac.uk/Vacancy.aspx...

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Michael Vlassopoulos @mvlass.bsky.social · 18/10/2023

New paper alert: Network formation model of parents (with A.Houndetoungan, A.Islam, and Y.Zenou). Key determinant is the child's gender. Counterfactual: If all children share the same gender, households would have approximately 15% more links. Link here: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

papers.ssrn.com

The Role of Child Gender in the Formation of Parents' Social Networks

Focusing on early childhood, we leverage a rich dataset from rural Bangladesh to investigate the role of children's gender in parental network formation. We est

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Michael Vlassopoulos @mvlass.bsky.social · 16/10/2023

Integrating refugee children through teacher training: voxdev.org/topic/health...

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Michael Vlassopoulos @mvlass.bsky.social · 02/10/2023

Hello! Excited to give this a try!

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