Finance
Rent Seeking and Corruption in Financial Markets (with A. Mian, Princeton), Annual Review of Economics, Vol 3, 2011.
Tracing the Impact of Bank Liquidity Shocks: Evidence from an Emerging Market (with A. Mian, Princeton). American Economic Review, Vol. 98, No.4, September 2008.
Subcontractors for Tractors: Theory and Evidence on Flexible Specialization, Supplier Selection, and Contracting (with T. Andrabi, Pomona and M. Ghatak, LSE) Journal of Development Economics, Vol. 79, 2006.
Do Lenders Favor Politically Connected Firms? Rent provision in an Emerging Financial Market (with A. Mian, Princeton). Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 120, Issue 4, November 2005.
Unchecked Intermediaries: Price Manipulation in an Emerging Stock Market (with A. Mian, Princeton). Journal of Financial Economics, Vol. 78, Issue 1, October 2005.
Dollars Dollars Everywhere, Nor Any Dime to Lend? (with A. Mian, Princeton and B. Zia, MIT). Review of Financial Studies. Vol. 23(12): 4281-4323. July 2008.
Education
Students Today, Teachers Tomorrow: Do Public Investments Alleviate Constraints on the Provision of Private Education? (with T. Andrabi, Pomona, and J.Das, DECRG World Bank). Forthcoming. Journal of Public Economics.
What Did You Do All Day? Mothers and Child Educational Outcomes (with T. Andrabi, Pomona, and J.Das, DECRG World Bank), Journal of Human Resources.Vol. 47(4): 873-912. 2012.
The Madrassa Controversy: The Story Does Not Fit The Facts (with J. Das, DECRG World Bank) Fothcoming, Shahzad Bashir and Robert Crews, ed. Under the Drones: Modern Lives in Afghanistan-Pakistan Borderlands, Harvard University Press. June 2011.
Education Policy in Pakistan: A Framework for Reform (with T. Andrabi, Pomona, and J.Das, DECRG World Bank) Policy Brief: International Growth Center, Pakistan. December 2010.
Do Value-Added Estimates Add Value? Accounting for Learning Dynamics (with T. Andrabi, Pomona, J.Das, DECRG World Bank, and T. Zajonc, Harvard), American Economic Journal: Applied Economics. Vol. 3(3): 29-54, 2011.
Learning and Educational Achievements in Punjab Schools (LEAPS): Insights to inform the education policy debate (with T. Andrabi, Pomona, J. Das, T. Vishwanath, World Bank, T. Zajonc, Harvard), Forthcoming, Oxford University Press.
Test Feasibility Survey - PAKISTAN: Education Sector
Main Text & Bibliography of the Report. Other appendices available upon request
The Madrasa Myth (with T. Andrabi, Pomona, J. Das, World Bank, C. Fair, Georgetown). Foreign Policy, June 2009.
A Dime a Day: The Possibilities and Limits of Private Schooling in Pakistan (with T. Andrabi, Pomona, J.Das, DECRG World Bank). Comparative Education Review, vol. 52, no. 3, August 2008.
Religious School Enrollment in Pakistan: A Look at the Data (with T. Andrabi, Pomona, J.Das, DECRG World Bank and T. Zajonc, Harvard). Comparative Education Review, Vol, 50, No. 3, August 2006.
Winner of the George Bereday Award for outstanding article published in the CER for the year 2006 Review. Click here to see Media Coverage.
Institutions
The Impact of the Hajj: Religion and Tolerance in Islam's Global Gathering (with D. Clingingsmith, Case Western, and M. Kremer, Harvard). Quarterly Journal of Economics, August 2009, Vol. 124, No. 3.
Awarded Carnegie Fellowship (2009-2011, $100K) by the Carnegie Corporation to pursue research on how religious institutions impact beliefs.
The Partition of India: Demographic Consequences (with P. Bharadwaj, UCSD and A. Mian, Princeton). International Migration. June 2009.
Can Good Projects Succeed in Bad Communities? Journal of Public Economics. Vol. 93(7): 899-916. September 2008.
Field Questionnaires for "Can Good Projects Succeed in Bad Communities?"
The Big March: Migratory Flows After the Partition of India (with P. Bharadwaj, UCSD and A. Mian, Princeton, GSB). Economic and Political Weekly Vol. 43 No. 35 August, 2008.
Mecca and Moderation (with D. Clingingsmith, Case Western, and M. Kremer, Harvard). The New York Times & The International Herald Tribune, May 20, 2008
Madrassa Metrics: The Statistics and Rhetoric of Religious Enrollment in Pakistan. (with T. Andrabi, Pomona, J.Das, DECRG World Bank and T. Zajonc, Harvard). Beyond Crisis: A Critical Second Look at Pakistan, (Ed. Naveeda Khan), Routledge, May 2008.
Local Government Reforms in Pakistan: Context, Content and Causes (with A. Cheema, Lahore University of Management Sciences and A. Qadir, Pakistan Administrative Staff College). Decentralization and Local Governance in Developing Countries: A Comparative Perspective, (Eds. D. Mookherjee and P. Bardhan), MIT Press, July 2006.
Measuring Empowerment at the Community Level: An Economist’s Perspective Narayan, Deepa, ed. 2005. Measuring Empowerment: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives. Washington , DC : World Bank.
Is Increasing Community Participation Always a Good Thing? Journal of the European Economic Association, Apr-May 2004 2(2-3):427-436.
Bank Credit and Business Networks (with A. Mian, Princeton and A. Qamar, State Bank of Pakistan), WP 2011.
Bad Bublic Schools are Public Bads: Test Scores and Civic Values in Public and Private Schools (with T. Andrabi, N. Bau, and J. Das), WP 2010.
Screening Peers Softly: Inferring the Quality of Small Borrowers (with R. Iyer, University of Amsterdam, and E. Luttmer, and K. Shue, Harvard University), WP 2013.
Partition of India: Demographic Consequences (with P. Bharadwaj, UCSD and A. Mian, Princeton) WP 2008.
Identifying Business Networks in Emerging Economies (with A. Mian, Princeton and A. Qamar, State Bank of Pakistan), WP 2005.
Entrepreneurial Finance Lab
A key challenge in developing countries is to figure out how to get finance to the 'missing middle': those small and medium enterprises (SMEs) that are too large for microcredit, but too small for banks and venture capitalists (VCs) yet show high rates of return. Our flagship project is to examine the role psychometric testing can play in selecting entrepreneurs for financing, with the aim of developing technology that allows the private sector to finance this segment in a profitable and sustainable way. Advances in psychometric testing and new research into the psychological, social, and cognitive characteristics of successful developing country entrepreneurs could provide ways to measure a potential borrower’s entrepreneurial ability directly, with low transaction costs and few information requirements. These tests can be automated, do not require a credit history, and are resistant to manipulation. When combined with the right financial contracts and other sources of information, they could represent a breakthrough in profitable lending to the missing middle. We have already developed and piloted a prototype in South Africa, which has shown significant promise.
See Entrepreneurial Finance Lab website.
Leaps Project
The LEAPS (Learning and Achievement in Punjab Schools) education project is an ongoing study of public and private primary education in Pakistan. The study is designed to survey the educational universe in over a hundred randomly selected rural villages in Punjab, the largest state in Pakistan. As of 2007, LEAPS includes four rounds of detailed school, household, and teacher surveys for 800 schools, 2,000 households and over 5,000 teachers. We also developed tests in Mathematics, Urdu and English that have been administered to the same 12,000 children over a four year period. This data is unique in that it provides a complete picture of the education system by linking information on the universe of public and private schools with detailed surveys of teachers, parents and children tracked between third and sixth grade. In 2006-2007 a new sample of 13,000 third graders was added to the project. The LEAPS project also includes two program evaluations based on randomly allocated treatments. The two treatments are (i) the provision of child and school-level information regarding learning achievement to parents and schools and (ii) increasing local control of schools through parent-teacher school councils working with an NGO. The evaluation of these treatments is currently in progress.
The first year of all the LEAPS data is now available publicly on the website.
Other Ongoing Projects
Property Tax Experiment in Punjab, Pakistan: Testing the Role of Wages, Incentives and Audit on Tax Inspectors' Behavior (with B. Olken, MIT, and A. Qadir, IGC/LSE)
Financing for Firms: Experimental Innovations in South Africa (with B. Klinger, Harvard University)
Divided We Fall: Understanding Retail Clusters (with J. Das, DECRG World Bank, and A. Mian, U of Chicago, GSB)
How Effective are Parent-Teacher School Councils? Experimental Evidence from a Developing Country (with T. Andrabi, Pomona, and J.Das, DECRG World Bank)
Information and Choices: Examining Parental Investments Across Children (with T. Andrabi, Pomona, J.Das, DECRG World Bank, and J. Montalvo, Universitat Pompeu Fabra)
The Big March: Consequences of the 1947 Partition of India (with A. Mian, U of Chicago, GSB)
Identifying the Impact of Decentralization: Evidence from Pakistan (with A. Cheema, Lahore University of Management Sciences, and A. Qadir, Pakistan Administrative Staff College)
Skills, Beliefs, and Development: Examining skill-enhancing interventions in Pakistan (with A. Cheema, Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), F. Naseer, LUMS, and Jacob Shapiro, Princeton)
"Religious School Enrollment in Pakistan: A Look at the Data"
Kennedy School Insight Series, Harvard Gazette, The Economist, Foreign Policy, Al-Jazeera, The NY Times, LA Times, Washington Times, HKS Press Release, World Peace Herald, BBC Urdu, Bloomberg Asia, Bassirat, Khaleej Times, The Jang, The Dawn, The Daily Times, Alert Net, Web India
RISE-PAK
RISEPAK (Relief Information System for Earthquakes - Pakistan)
Co-founded Earthquake relief web-portal - Winner of the Stockholm Challenge Award 2006 in the Public Administration Category.
RISEPAK is an information-sharing web that offers a coordination tool for disasters. RISE-PAK was developed very quickly by a consortium of experts from US and Pakistani Universities, the World Bank and the private sector with support from the Government of Pakistan. It provides up-to-date damage and relief information about affected villages based on data on population statistics, satellites, geographical systems, as well as from agencies, relief workers, local officials, and anyone with access to immediate village-level data that will critically support the current coordination of relief.
Stockholm Challenge, Harvard Gazette, Harvard President, Harvard Crimson, Center For International Development, Harvard, The World Bank - Press Release, The World Bank - Full, The United Nations, President of Pakistan, Relief Web, PhysOrg, GIS Development, Development Gateway, Kathryn Cramer's Blog, AIDG Blog, Pomona College, The News, Wikipedia, The Dawn, The Daily Times
"Estimating the Impact of the Hajj: Religion and Tolerance in Islam’s Global Gathering"
The Economist, CNN, Slate, International Herald Tribune, Harvard Kennedy School, HKS Impact, Islam Online, The National, Brookings
Dubai School of Government Policy Brief
"Microcredit is not the Enemy"
Pakistan
API-110 - Advanced Microeconomic Policy Analysis
This course is the second half of the first year Graduate Microeconomics course in the MPAID (Masters in Public Administration and International development Program. The course introduces students to various tools of economic analysis such as general equilibrium, game theory, economics of information and contract theory and through papers in the reading list, provides a sense of how these tools may be applied to policy problems particularly in the context of low-income economies.
PED-204 - New Approaches to Industrial Policy in Development Countries
The course uses a mix of lectures, discussions and readings to examine industrial policy in developing countries from a micro-economic perspective. The main premise of the course is to have students develop an analytic and conceptual framework which can then be applied to a problem, rather than suggest particular solutions. While the topics are organized in terms of specific issues such as access to physical, financial and human capital, the importance of institutions, regulation and corporate governance, small and medium enterprises, and business groups, the common theme is an analytic approach that emphasizes incentives and institutional structures faced by firms operating in these environments.
Welcome to my personal page. The only serious stuff here onwards is the link to my wife, Sehr Jalal's, miniature paintings (a must see), my son Amaan's page, and my daughter Nuriya's page.