Assistant Professor
Department of Economics
and School of International and Public Affairs
Columbia University
420 West 118th Street, Mail Code 3323
New York, NY 10027
Office: +1-212-854-1674
Fax: +1-212-854-5765
leigh.linden (at) columbia.edu
I am an Assistant Professor at Columbia University with appointments in both the Department of Economics and the School of International and Public Affairs. As an economist, I specialize in the fields of development and labor economics, exploring the microeconomic determinants of income inequality and poverty. I am particularly interested in the use of social programs, and in particular education, to improve the well-being of children from poor families. Methodologically, I specialize in the use of randomized evaluations both to test economic theories of human behavior and to assess the efficacy of social programs.
My main interest is understanding the economic determinants of the well-being of children. This includes both understanding how the provision of various types of educational resources affects the development of human capital and understanding the factors that determine the demand for education by both children and their families. In addition, I have two smaller strands of research. The current strand involves investigating political economy issues in developing countries, specifically India. I hope to understand the role of institutional structures and election rules in determining the outcomes of election and eventually the allocation of resources. And second, as an undergraduate, I co-authored a few papers on the computational difficulty of choices faced by consumers and the optimal pricing of computer networks.
At Columbia, I currently teach two courses: a senior seminar on evaluation issues in the Department of Economics and a section of the Workshop in Applied Development in the Program in Economic and Political Development. I also consult on the design of evaluations, and I am an affiliate of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a fellow of the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy at Columbia University. I received a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2004 and I received a Bachelor or Arts in Economics and a Bachelor Science in Mathematics from the University of Texas at Austin in 1997. ( Texas Fight!)