I am an applied economist with interests in issues of global development with a focus on evidence-based policy research. My current research interests are on financial inclusion, skills training, infrastructure, and education. I have several ongoing field experiments (RCTs) in South Asia, especially in Bangladesh and in India. Completed projects are available as working papers and articles in international peer-reviewed journals including the World Bank Economic Review, World Development and Journal of Development Studies, to name a few. I was awarded the Albert Berry Prize at the Canadian Economic Association (CEA) Conference for the best Paper in Development Economics in 2016. I recently published an edited book titled "Seasonality and Micro-credit" from Springer.I am currently a Visiting Scholar at the Wagner School of Public Service, New York University. I am also a tenured research fellow at the Institute of Developing Economies (IDE) JETRO, Japan (on-leave) and an adjunct assistant professor at the Graduate School of Public Policy (GraSPP), University of Tokyo. Prior to joining IDE-JETRO, I worked as a lecturer at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) and the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) in Australia and at the BRAC University in Bangladesh. I've also held visiting positions at the Singapore Management University and the University of Kent, UK. Address: Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan
Objectives To derive and validate a data-driven Contagion Risk Index (CR-Index) at sub-national l... more Objectives To derive and validate a data-driven Contagion Risk Index (CR-Index) at sub-national level for low-income countries – detecting potential infection hotspots – aiding policymakers with efficient mitigation planning for COVID-19 and future epidemics and pandemics. Methods We utilize daily district-level COVID-19 data (positive cases and deaths) from South Asia (India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh) from 2020–2022 to derive the CR-Index – founded on commutable disease spreadability vectors across four domains: urbanization, informality, migration, and health infrastructure. We validated CR-Index based risk-zoning by utilizing time-series regressions and machine learning (ML) estimates (Random Forests and a battery of cross-validation) for predictive accuracy. Results Regressions demonstrate a strong association between the CR-Index and sub-national COVID-19 epidemiology data. ML driven validation show strong predictive support for the CR-Index that can distinguish districts with ...
Youth unemployment is a major issue in many developing countries, particularly in locations not w... more Youth unemployment is a major issue in many developing countries, particularly in locations not well connected with large urban markets. A limited number of available job opportunities in urban centres may reduce the benefit of policies that encourage rural–urban migration. In this project, we investigated the feasibility of ‘virtual migration’, by training rural youth in Bangladesh to become online freelancers, enabling them to export their labour services to a global online marketplace. We did this by setting up a ‘freelancing incubator’, which provided the necessary workspace and infrastructure – specifically, high-speed internet connectivity and computers. Close mentoring was also provided to participants to assist in navigating the competitive online marketplace. We show the exciting potential of online work for improving the incomes of poor youth in developing countries. We also highlight the constraints to this type of work: financing constraints for the high training cost, a...
Can governments leverage existing service-delivery platforms to scale early childhood development... more Can governments leverage existing service-delivery platforms to scale early childhood development (ECD) programs? We experimentally study a large-scale home-visiting intervention providing materials and counseling --- integrated into Bangladesh's national nutrition program without extra financial incentives for the service providers (SPs). We find SPs partially substituted away from nutritional to ECD counseling. Intent-to-treat estimates show the program improved child's cognitive (0.17 SD), language (0.23 SD), and socio-emotional developments (0.12-0.14 SD). Wasting and underweight rates also declined. Improved maternal agency, complementary parental investments, and higher take-up of the pre-existing nutrition program were important mechanisms. We estimate a sizeable internal rate-of-return of 19.6
type="main"> This article aims at identifying the determinants of government expendi... more type="main"> This article aims at identifying the determinants of government expenditures of developing countries by placing emphasis on the political institutions and governance variables, which have not been addressed so much in the previous literature. Using a panel data analysis for 97 developing countries from the period 1984 to 2004, this study finds evidence that controlling for economic, social, and demographical factors, political institutional and governance variables significantly influence the consumption expenditure in developing countries. Political institutional variables such as the type of political ruling and political power in the parliament positively influence consumption expenditure; on the contrary, governance variables such as corruption influence negatively. Furthermore, we find that autocratic governments with military ruling are not particularly accommodative toward consumption expenditures as the public spending significantly shrinks under military dictatorship compared with other forms of governance. In order to check consistency of our findings, we ran alternative specifications as well as conducted extreme bound tests. Our results largely survived these tests showing robustness of our findings. (JEL E01, E02, E61, E62, H2, H4, H5, H6, O11, O5)
The mismatch between credit repayments and income seasonality poses a challenge for microfinance ... more The mismatch between credit repayments and income seasonality poses a challenge for microfinance institutions (MFIs) working in developing countries. For instance, in northern Bangladesh, income and consumption downfalls during the lean season after the transplanting of major paddy crops are a serious threat to a household's economy. Poor landless agricultural wage laborers suffer the most owing to this seasonality as they face difficulties in smoothing their consumption. However, in designing microcredit products, MFIs do not usually provide flexibility or seasonal adjustment during the lean season. This is mainly because MFIs are afraid that such flexibility might break the repayment discipline of borrowers, resulting in higher default rates. We thus conducted a randomized controlled trial in 2011-12 in northern Bangladesh to empirically test whether seasonality-adjusted flexible microcredit leads to an increase in repayment problems for MFIs as well as whether it can increase and stabilize consumption of borrower households. Our results suggest no statistically discernible difference among the treatment arms in case of default, overdue amount, or repayment frequency. On the other hand, we find no positive impact of repayment flexibility on immediate food consumption during the period of seasonality, except for in-kind full moratorium treatment group. After a year of initial intervention, however, we see positive changes in food intake during the lean season. Thus, our preliminary results are in favor of seasonality-adjusted flexible microcredit.
While the effectiveness of lockdowns to reduce Coronavirus Disease-2019 (COVID-19) transmission i... more While the effectiveness of lockdowns to reduce Coronavirus Disease-2019 (COVID-19) transmission is well established, uncertainties remain on the lifting principles of these restrictive interventions. World Health Organization recommends case positive rate of 5% or lower as a threshold for safe reopening. However, inadequate testing capacity limits the applicability of this recommendation, especially in the low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs). To develop a practical reopening strategy for LMICs, in this study, we first identify the optimal timing of safe reopening by exploring accessible epidemiological data of 24 countries during the initial COVID-19 surge. We find that safely reopening requires a two-week waiting period, after the crossover of daily infection and recovery rates – coupled with a post-crossover continuous negative trend in daily new cases. Epidemiologic SIRM model-based simulation analysis validates our findings. Finally, we develop an easily interpretable...
Any opinions expressed here are those of the author(s) and not those of IZA. Research published i... more Any opinions expressed here are those of the author(s) and not those of IZA. Research published in this series may include views on policy, but the institute itself takes no institutional policy positions. The IZA research network is committed to the IZA Guiding Principles of Research Integrity. The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn is a local and virtual international research center and a place of communication between science, politics and business. IZA is an independent nonprofit organization supported by Deutsche Post Foundation. The center is associated with the University of Bonn and offers a stimulating research environment through its international network, workshops and conferences, data service, project support, research visits and doctoral program. IZA engages in (i) original and internationally competitive research in all fields of labor economics, (ii) development of policy concepts, and (iii) dissemination of research results and concepts to the intereste...
Political protests in the form of strikes are still quite common in the former Indian subcontinen... more Political protests in the form of strikes are still quite common in the former Indian subcontinent countries, locally known as hartals. Such a form of protest is associated with a mass movement of total shutdown of economic activities and closure of educational institutes, which often results in coercion, violence and damage of public and private properties. Proponents of hartals claim this form of political protest as their rights to "freedom of expression" and "freedom of assembly"; however, exercising such a form of freedom comes at a cost to the nation and to the economy. Utilizing the World Bank enterprise survey data of 2007 and 2013 of Bangladesh, this paper is one of the first attempts to systematically examine the impact of hartal on firms. We find that the factor neutral effect of strikes is strongly positive which significantly increases the cost of production. Moreover, we report strong evidence of substantial productivity loss by firms during the eve...
A rigorous randomised controlled trial (RCT) impact study shows how a targeted training-programme... more A rigorous randomised controlled trial (RCT) impact study shows how a targeted training-programme, stipend and on-the-job training (OJT) intervention may have a significant effect on worker participation in Bangladesh’s ready-made garments (RMG) sector.
This study quantitatively explores the changing population geography in Bengal, with a particular... more This study quantitatively explores the changing population geography in Bengal, with a particular focus on Partition in India in 1947 and Independence of Bangladesh in 1971. Based on decadal census data from 1901 to 2001 at the district level, this paper explores how trends in regional population growth evolved with such historical events. Following Redding and Sturm (2008), Differences-in-Differences estimation is also employed. Estimation results show that there were different shocks on both sides and from both events. In West Bengal, the change in the regional population trends occurred in 1947 and remained similar thereafter. On the other hand, in East Bengal, the population growth became statistically significant after 1971. Further robustness checks show that the impacts were not uniform with respect to the distance from the border. Overall analyses show that the emergence of the international border in Bengal had asymmetric impacts on both sides.
This paper investigates the relationship between access to micro-credit and temporary seasonal mi... more This paper investigates the relationship between access to micro-credit and temporary seasonal migration, an issue which is largely ignored in the standard ruralurban migration literature. Seasonal migration due to natural disasters or agricultural downturns is a common phenomenon in developing countries. Using primary data from a cross-sectional household survey from the northern part of Bangladesh, this study quantifies the factors that influence such migration decisions. Seasonal migration is a natural choice for individual suffering periodic hardship. However, due to strong loan repayment rules, those who have prior access to micro-credit have no such option. I find that there is no significant difference in income in lean period between those who have access to micro-credit and those who do not. Households that take the decision to migrate while having access to microcredit earn significantly more than households who only have micro-credit in the lean period. In addition, this ...
Using data collected through a telephone-based survey in rural Bangladesh during the height of th... more Using data collected through a telephone-based survey in rural Bangladesh during the height of the pandemic, we present evidence on the effects of COVID-19-led lockdown and school closures on children, focusing on three child-related outcomes: time use of children during the school closure, plans regarding children’s schooling continuation, and the incidence of child marriages. Our analysis reveals heterogeneity in the effects of lockdown and school closure in terms of the child’s gender and the type of shocks. We find a decrease in children’s study time and an increase in time spent on household chores during the school closure, and these changes were significantly larger for girls than for boys. Within the household, respiratory illness lowered expectations that a child would return to school and increased the probability of marriage-related discussions for girls. Our findings offer a cautionary tale regarding the potential longterm effects of pandemic for girls in developing coun...
Objectives To derive and validate a data-driven Contagion Risk Index (CR-Index) at sub-national l... more Objectives To derive and validate a data-driven Contagion Risk Index (CR-Index) at sub-national level for low-income countries – detecting potential infection hotspots – aiding policymakers with efficient mitigation planning for COVID-19 and future epidemics and pandemics. Methods We utilize daily district-level COVID-19 data (positive cases and deaths) from South Asia (India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh) from 2020–2022 to derive the CR-Index – founded on commutable disease spreadability vectors across four domains: urbanization, informality, migration, and health infrastructure. We validated CR-Index based risk-zoning by utilizing time-series regressions and machine learning (ML) estimates (Random Forests and a battery of cross-validation) for predictive accuracy. Results Regressions demonstrate a strong association between the CR-Index and sub-national COVID-19 epidemiology data. ML driven validation show strong predictive support for the CR-Index that can distinguish districts with ...
Youth unemployment is a major issue in many developing countries, particularly in locations not w... more Youth unemployment is a major issue in many developing countries, particularly in locations not well connected with large urban markets. A limited number of available job opportunities in urban centres may reduce the benefit of policies that encourage rural–urban migration. In this project, we investigated the feasibility of ‘virtual migration’, by training rural youth in Bangladesh to become online freelancers, enabling them to export their labour services to a global online marketplace. We did this by setting up a ‘freelancing incubator’, which provided the necessary workspace and infrastructure – specifically, high-speed internet connectivity and computers. Close mentoring was also provided to participants to assist in navigating the competitive online marketplace. We show the exciting potential of online work for improving the incomes of poor youth in developing countries. We also highlight the constraints to this type of work: financing constraints for the high training cost, a...
Can governments leverage existing service-delivery platforms to scale early childhood development... more Can governments leverage existing service-delivery platforms to scale early childhood development (ECD) programs? We experimentally study a large-scale home-visiting intervention providing materials and counseling --- integrated into Bangladesh's national nutrition program without extra financial incentives for the service providers (SPs). We find SPs partially substituted away from nutritional to ECD counseling. Intent-to-treat estimates show the program improved child's cognitive (0.17 SD), language (0.23 SD), and socio-emotional developments (0.12-0.14 SD). Wasting and underweight rates also declined. Improved maternal agency, complementary parental investments, and higher take-up of the pre-existing nutrition program were important mechanisms. We estimate a sizeable internal rate-of-return of 19.6
type="main"> This article aims at identifying the determinants of government expendi... more type="main"> This article aims at identifying the determinants of government expenditures of developing countries by placing emphasis on the political institutions and governance variables, which have not been addressed so much in the previous literature. Using a panel data analysis for 97 developing countries from the period 1984 to 2004, this study finds evidence that controlling for economic, social, and demographical factors, political institutional and governance variables significantly influence the consumption expenditure in developing countries. Political institutional variables such as the type of political ruling and political power in the parliament positively influence consumption expenditure; on the contrary, governance variables such as corruption influence negatively. Furthermore, we find that autocratic governments with military ruling are not particularly accommodative toward consumption expenditures as the public spending significantly shrinks under military dictatorship compared with other forms of governance. In order to check consistency of our findings, we ran alternative specifications as well as conducted extreme bound tests. Our results largely survived these tests showing robustness of our findings. (JEL E01, E02, E61, E62, H2, H4, H5, H6, O11, O5)
The mismatch between credit repayments and income seasonality poses a challenge for microfinance ... more The mismatch between credit repayments and income seasonality poses a challenge for microfinance institutions (MFIs) working in developing countries. For instance, in northern Bangladesh, income and consumption downfalls during the lean season after the transplanting of major paddy crops are a serious threat to a household's economy. Poor landless agricultural wage laborers suffer the most owing to this seasonality as they face difficulties in smoothing their consumption. However, in designing microcredit products, MFIs do not usually provide flexibility or seasonal adjustment during the lean season. This is mainly because MFIs are afraid that such flexibility might break the repayment discipline of borrowers, resulting in higher default rates. We thus conducted a randomized controlled trial in 2011-12 in northern Bangladesh to empirically test whether seasonality-adjusted flexible microcredit leads to an increase in repayment problems for MFIs as well as whether it can increase and stabilize consumption of borrower households. Our results suggest no statistically discernible difference among the treatment arms in case of default, overdue amount, or repayment frequency. On the other hand, we find no positive impact of repayment flexibility on immediate food consumption during the period of seasonality, except for in-kind full moratorium treatment group. After a year of initial intervention, however, we see positive changes in food intake during the lean season. Thus, our preliminary results are in favor of seasonality-adjusted flexible microcredit.
While the effectiveness of lockdowns to reduce Coronavirus Disease-2019 (COVID-19) transmission i... more While the effectiveness of lockdowns to reduce Coronavirus Disease-2019 (COVID-19) transmission is well established, uncertainties remain on the lifting principles of these restrictive interventions. World Health Organization recommends case positive rate of 5% or lower as a threshold for safe reopening. However, inadequate testing capacity limits the applicability of this recommendation, especially in the low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs). To develop a practical reopening strategy for LMICs, in this study, we first identify the optimal timing of safe reopening by exploring accessible epidemiological data of 24 countries during the initial COVID-19 surge. We find that safely reopening requires a two-week waiting period, after the crossover of daily infection and recovery rates – coupled with a post-crossover continuous negative trend in daily new cases. Epidemiologic SIRM model-based simulation analysis validates our findings. Finally, we develop an easily interpretable...
Any opinions expressed here are those of the author(s) and not those of IZA. Research published i... more Any opinions expressed here are those of the author(s) and not those of IZA. Research published in this series may include views on policy, but the institute itself takes no institutional policy positions. The IZA research network is committed to the IZA Guiding Principles of Research Integrity. The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn is a local and virtual international research center and a place of communication between science, politics and business. IZA is an independent nonprofit organization supported by Deutsche Post Foundation. The center is associated with the University of Bonn and offers a stimulating research environment through its international network, workshops and conferences, data service, project support, research visits and doctoral program. IZA engages in (i) original and internationally competitive research in all fields of labor economics, (ii) development of policy concepts, and (iii) dissemination of research results and concepts to the intereste...
Political protests in the form of strikes are still quite common in the former Indian subcontinen... more Political protests in the form of strikes are still quite common in the former Indian subcontinent countries, locally known as hartals. Such a form of protest is associated with a mass movement of total shutdown of economic activities and closure of educational institutes, which often results in coercion, violence and damage of public and private properties. Proponents of hartals claim this form of political protest as their rights to "freedom of expression" and "freedom of assembly"; however, exercising such a form of freedom comes at a cost to the nation and to the economy. Utilizing the World Bank enterprise survey data of 2007 and 2013 of Bangladesh, this paper is one of the first attempts to systematically examine the impact of hartal on firms. We find that the factor neutral effect of strikes is strongly positive which significantly increases the cost of production. Moreover, we report strong evidence of substantial productivity loss by firms during the eve...
A rigorous randomised controlled trial (RCT) impact study shows how a targeted training-programme... more A rigorous randomised controlled trial (RCT) impact study shows how a targeted training-programme, stipend and on-the-job training (OJT) intervention may have a significant effect on worker participation in Bangladesh’s ready-made garments (RMG) sector.
This study quantitatively explores the changing population geography in Bengal, with a particular... more This study quantitatively explores the changing population geography in Bengal, with a particular focus on Partition in India in 1947 and Independence of Bangladesh in 1971. Based on decadal census data from 1901 to 2001 at the district level, this paper explores how trends in regional population growth evolved with such historical events. Following Redding and Sturm (2008), Differences-in-Differences estimation is also employed. Estimation results show that there were different shocks on both sides and from both events. In West Bengal, the change in the regional population trends occurred in 1947 and remained similar thereafter. On the other hand, in East Bengal, the population growth became statistically significant after 1971. Further robustness checks show that the impacts were not uniform with respect to the distance from the border. Overall analyses show that the emergence of the international border in Bengal had asymmetric impacts on both sides.
This paper investigates the relationship between access to micro-credit and temporary seasonal mi... more This paper investigates the relationship between access to micro-credit and temporary seasonal migration, an issue which is largely ignored in the standard ruralurban migration literature. Seasonal migration due to natural disasters or agricultural downturns is a common phenomenon in developing countries. Using primary data from a cross-sectional household survey from the northern part of Bangladesh, this study quantifies the factors that influence such migration decisions. Seasonal migration is a natural choice for individual suffering periodic hardship. However, due to strong loan repayment rules, those who have prior access to micro-credit have no such option. I find that there is no significant difference in income in lean period between those who have access to micro-credit and those who do not. Households that take the decision to migrate while having access to microcredit earn significantly more than households who only have micro-credit in the lean period. In addition, this ...
Using data collected through a telephone-based survey in rural Bangladesh during the height of th... more Using data collected through a telephone-based survey in rural Bangladesh during the height of the pandemic, we present evidence on the effects of COVID-19-led lockdown and school closures on children, focusing on three child-related outcomes: time use of children during the school closure, plans regarding children’s schooling continuation, and the incidence of child marriages. Our analysis reveals heterogeneity in the effects of lockdown and school closure in terms of the child’s gender and the type of shocks. We find a decrease in children’s study time and an increase in time spent on household chores during the school closure, and these changes were significantly larger for girls than for boys. Within the household, respiratory illness lowered expectations that a child would return to school and increased the probability of marriage-related discussions for girls. Our findings offer a cautionary tale regarding the potential longterm effects of pandemic for girls in developing coun...
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