Family Background and College Major Choice: Evidence on Major Earnings Growth, Leighton. M. & J. D. Speer. 2025. Education Finance and Policy. Online ahead of print. Working paper version.
Teachers on the Move: Evidence from a Large-Scale Learning Intervention during Lockdown, Bhatia, K & M Leighton. April 2024. Journal of Development Studies. Vol. 60, No. 7, pp. 1002–1020. https://doi.org/10.1080/00220388.2024.2337381
Fostering Early Childhood Development in Low-Resource Communities: Evidence from a Group-Based Parenting Intervention in Tanzania, Leighton, M, A Martine & J Massaga. October 2023. World Development. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2023.106335
Major-Occupation Match Quality: An Empirical Measure Based on Relative Productivity, Leighton, M. & J. D. Speer. 2023. The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis and Policy. Vol 23, no. 1, pp. 285-292. https://doi.org/10.1515/bejeap-2022-0254
Mother Tongue Reading Materials as a Bridge to Literacy, Leighton, M. December 2022. Economics of Education Review. Volume 91 (102312). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econedurev.2022.102312
Labor Market Returns to College Major Specificity, Leighton, M. & J. D. Speer. September 2020. European Economic Review. Vol 128 (103489). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.euroecorev.2020.103489
Video summary by Jurin Katayama Flores for the St Andrews Economist
Unpaid work and access to science professions, Fournier, A. M. V., Holford, A. J., Bond, A. L. & Leighton, M. A. 19 Jun 2019. PLoS ONE. 14, 6, 16 p., e0217032. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0217032
"A Bad Deal for Early-Career Researchers" American Scientist (Nov/Dec 2019)
"Experience versus salary" Science (11 oct 2019)
Social promotion in primary school: effects on grade progression, Leighton, M. A., Souza, P. & Straub, S., 30 Jun 2019. Brazilian Review of Econometrics. 39, 1, p. 1-33. http://dx.doi.org/10.12660/bre.v39n12019.78513
The causal effect of parenting style on early child development
with Anitha Martine, Julius Massaga, Emmanuel Bunzari (July 2024) EdWorkingPaper: 24-996; submitted
This paper presents causal evidence on the impact of parenting practices on early child development. We exploit exogenous changes in nurturing care induced by a parent training intervention to estimate the impact of nurturing parenting practices on child outcomes. We find a large and significant impact measured at age two; in contrast, at age four nurturing care has only a modest, and imprecisely estimated, impact on child outcomes. This is despite the fact that the intervention induced substantial changes in parenting practices at both ages. The differential relationship between child development and nurturing care at ages two and four explains the fade-out in treatment effects for the intervention as a whole: although parents continued to respond, their response no longer had the intended effect on child outcomes.
with Kartika Bhatia (Nov 2022), reject & resubmit Journal of Development Studies
In recent decades many countries have sought to decentralize the provision of public goods and services, and to some extent also the collection of government revenues. While local governments usually have more information on local needs, they typically have less capacity than higher-level governments and may be prone to elite capture. In this paper we evaluate the impact of a capacity-building training for Panchayat (village) staff in rural India to build skills for the Gram Panchayat Development Plan, a formal planning document drawn up on an annual basis. We do not find that the intervention affected the amount of funds requested in these plans; however, we find some evidence of a shift in focus towards social sector expenditure.
The Major Decision: Labor Market Implications of the Timing Of Specialization in College
with Luc Bridet and Richard Murphy, R&R Labour Economics
College students in the United States choose their major much later than their counterparts in Europe. In this paper we estimate the benefits of flexible specialization: specifically, whether additional years of multi-disciplinary education help students make a better choice of specialization, and at what cost in foregone specialized skills. We first document that students who choose their major later are more likely to change fields on the labor market. We then build and estimate a dynamic model of college education where the optimal timing of specialization reflects a tradeoff between discovering comparative advantage and acquiring occupation-specific skills. Estimates suggest that delaying specialization is informative, although noisy. Working in the field of comparative advantage accounts for up to 20% of a well-matched worker’s earnings. While education is transferable across fields with only a 10% penalty, workers who wish to change fields incur a large, one-time cost. We use these estimates to compare the current system to one which imposes specialization at college entry. In this counterfactual the number of workers who switch fields drops from 24% to 20%; however, comparative advantage-occupation mismatch rises from 23% to 30%, resulting in an overall expected welfare reduction of approximately 1.5% of earnings.
Bangladesh Children's Book Initiative End Line Report. 2019. M Leighton & K Mucyo. Save the Children.
Impact of performance feedback on student study habits and grades, with Lavinia Kinne
Selection into College Major, with Jamin Speer
The Kids Aren’t Like They Used to Be: 40 Years of Evidence on How College Students Have Changed, with Jamin Speer
Human Capital and Retirement Optimisation, with Irina Merkurieva