Leigh L. Linden is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Texas at Austin with a joint appointment in the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs. Working in the fields of development economics and economics of education, he explores the role of education in the microeconomic foundations of poverty. He focuses on understanding both the education production process and the family decision problems that determine the allocation of educational opportunities within the household. Methodologically, he specializes in the use of large-scale randomized controlled trials. His research has been published in the American Economic Review, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, and the Applied Economic Journal: Applied Economics. He is affiliated with the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development (BREAD), the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), and Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA). He earned a PhD in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2004 and received a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics and a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from the University of Texas at Austin in 1997.

He joined IZA as a Research Fellow in February 2008.