She received her PhD in Economics from Columbia University in 2013 after spending a year as Predoctoral Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School Women and Public Policy Program. Persson spent the academic year 2013-2014 as a Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR), and subsequently joined the Economics Department at Stanford in July 2014. Persson is an applied micro economist and her work lies in the fields of public and labor economics.