Marta is a micro-economist investigating child and youth human development through a micro behavioural lens.

She joined the longitudinal study, Young Lives, at the Oxofrd Department of International Development in 2015 and is leading the quantitative research agenda. She has a PhD in Economics from the University of Essex (UK) and a Masters in Economics from the University of Leuven (Belgium). She has also been an IZA research affiliate since 2012.

Before joining Young Lives, she worked as an economist at the World Bank in the Poverty, Inequality and Gender Unit for the Latin America and Caribbean Region and in the Education Unit for the Africa Region.

Her main research interests include labour economics (education and gender), behavioural economics (choice under uncertainty, adolescent risk behaviours), and development economics (poverty, inequality and early childhood development). Her recent work focuses on skills formation, education trajectories and labour market outcomes. In addition, she investigates the role of aspirations and subjective expectations as potential self-enforcing mechanisms underlying poverty and gender inequality.

Marta has analytical and fieldwork experience, and experience of dialogue with public and private institutions (e.g. national and local governments, academia, research centres, and schools), in countries such as Ecuador, Peru, Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria, Ethiopia and India.