I am an Assistant Professor in Economics at the University of Galway.
I am also affiliated with the CESifo Network, CERIS and the Centre for Economic Demography.
My research covers topics in applied microeconomics related to human capital, child development and inequalities in both developed and developing countries. See below for my latest research.
You can find a copy of my CV here.
with Jan Bietenbeck, Petter Lundborg, Kaveh Majlesi
Submitted
We estimate the effects of exposure to income and wealth inequality during adolescence on long-term educational and labor market outcomes. Using detailed Swedish register data covering all students completing compulsory education between 1989 and 2013, we construct measures of inequality among students’ school-cohort peers and exploit variation between cohorts within schools to identify causal effects of inequality exposure. We find no evidence that exposure to inequality affects GPA, high school graduation, university enrollment, university completion, or income up to age 35. These null results are precisely estimated and robust to alternative measures of inequality, sample definitions, and specifications. Moreover, we find no evidence of systematic heterogeneity by socioeconomic background. Taken together, these findings suggest that school integration policies mixing students from different socioeconomic backgrounds do not necessarily carry hidden long-run costs stemming from exposure to inequality. More broadly, they challenge the view that school-based exposure to peer inequality during adolescence is a causal driver of human capital accumulation or later-life mobility.
with Eleonora Guarnieri, Helmut Rainer
Submitted
Why does the quantity--quality tradeoff operate in some societies but not others? We study this question using the staggered introduction of free primary education (FPE) in sub-Saharan Africa, which lowered the cost of investing in children's human capital. Exploiting within--ethnicity variation, we find that FPE reduces fertility and improves child survival and school enrollment, but only among ethnic groups with gender--egalitarian norms. We provide evidence that FPE strengthens women's empowerment, predominantly among those gender--egalitarian groups. A simple conceptual framework shows that lower schooling costs create incentives to reduce fertility, while prevailing gender norms determine whether households act on those incentives.
with Patrick Wing McHale, Devon Spika
Submitted
Education is widely seen as a key driver of economic growth, yet social institutions may mediate efforts to improve outcomes. We study how age-set organisation---where societies are structured into age-based social groups---shapes parental human capital investments and children’s educational attainment. Children in age-set societies receive greater investments, improving health and schooling at younger ages. Yet effects on education dissipate between the ages of 13-16, coinciding with the timing of age-set initiation. We also find that universal secondary education raised schooling only in non-age-set societies. These findings highlight how the impacts of social institutions can vary across the life-cycle.
with Nick Huntington-Klein, Claus Pörtner and others, as part of the Many Economists project
Accepted at Journal of Economic Literature
Disagreement among researchers is a central and productive feature of scientific progress. However, researchers’ discretionary choices, some of which are not easily observable, may cause standard errors to understate uncertainty. This paper synthesizes evidence on how researcher variation shapes empirical conclusions and presents new evidence on its sources and implications. We also report results from a many-analyst study in which 146 research teams estimate the same causal effect under varying constraints. Although central estimates are broadly aligned, dispersion remains substantial. Imposing a shared research design reduced agreement, partly due to adherence errors. Further restricting data cleaning and preparation improved agreement. Variation across researchers is often comparable in magnitude to sampling uncertainty but is unevenly distributed across stages of the research process. Overall, the evidence suggests that conventional uncertainty summaries understate total uncertainty and that less visible research decisions warrant greater scrutiny.
Journal of Human Resources (link)
Using data from 27 sub-Saharan African countries, I identify the causal effect of sibling gender on education and how it varies according to inheritance customs. Boys who inherit their father's property experience no effect of sibling gender, while boys who do not inherit experience a significant negative effect of having a brother. Having a brother has a small negative effect on the education of girls, regardless of inheritance customs. The effect of sibling gender converges after the introduction of laws guaranteeing that children inherit from their parents, suggesting that parents substitute between transferring inheritance and investing in their children’s education.
Coverage: Broadstreet, GEEZ, LUSEM Spotlight, Center for Global Development
with Juan David Hernandez-Leal, Frances Lu and Camila Navajas-Ahumada
New version coming soon
with Jonas Lundstedt
Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization (link)
More granular grading scales provide a more accurate assessment of achievement and thus provide students with more informative feedback on their performance. Using Swedish administrative data and exploiting a natural experiment, we identify the effects of moving from a system with three passing grades to one with five passing grades. Students receiving more informative grades are less likely to graduate from high school, from academic high school tracks, and from STEM and art high school tracks. Affected students are also less likely to enrol in STEM courses at university. The evidence suggests discouragement as a likely mechanism, with students revising their self-belief downward when receiving more informative feedback.
Coverage: Läraren (in Swedish), LUSEM Spotlight
with Jan Bietenbeck
Journal of Applied Econometrics (link)
We re-examine the importance of instruction time for student achievement on international assessments. We successfully replicate the positive effect of weekly instruction time in the seminal paper by Lavy (Economic Journal, 125, F397-F424) in a narrow sense. Extending the analysis to other international assessments, we find effects that are consistently smaller in magnitude. We provide evidence that this discrepancy might be partly due to a different way of measuring instruction time in the data used in the original paper. Our results suggest that differences in instruction time are less important than previously thought for explaining international gaps in student achievement.
The Effect of University Grade Inflation on Graduate Outcomes, with Judith Delaney and Therese Nilsson
Misperceptions of Income Inequality and Voter Participation, with Vasilisa Werner
I am participating in the R2E project, led by Jörg Ankel-Peters, Anna Dreber and Magnus Johannesson
Office: Room 212, Cairnes Building, University of Galway
Postal address: Discipline of Economics, J.E. Cairnes School of Business and Economics, University of Galway, University Road, Galway, Ireland
email: matthew.collins[at]universityofgalway.ie
BlueSky: collinsmatthew.bsky.social