Research

Awards

• The American Society of Health Economists (ASHEcon) Diversity Scholarship, 2026

  • Social Media: LinkedIn, ASHEcon website, North Texas e-News

• Social Sciences Division Award, Austin College, 2025

  • Social Media: LinkedIn

Publications in Economics/ ABDC-indexed Journals

• “Breastfeeding and Child Development Outcomes across Early Childhood and Adolescence: Doubly Robust Estimation with Machine Learning” (with Andrew Hussey), 2025, Economic Modelling, Volume 151, October 2025, 107225.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econmod.2025.107225  

  • Previously Released as IZA Discussion Paper #17080 

  • Presentations: SEA Annual Meetings 2023 

• The Long-Term Impacts of Breastfeeding on Educational Attainment of Adults (with Andrew Hussey), forthcoming, Review of Economics of the Household. 

  • Presentations: North Texas Economics Conference 2024 

• Rural-Urban Gaps in Body Mass Index of Childbearing Women in Bangladesh: Evidence from Counterfactual Decomposition Methods (with Andrew Hussey and Reshad Osmani), forthcoming, Applied Economics. 

  • Presentations:  SEA Annual Meetings 2023

• “Determinants of unhealthy BMI among women of childbearing age in Bangladesh” (with Reshad Osmani and Albert Okunade), 2024. Journal of Population Research 41(3):16.

• “The Affordable Care Act and Racial Disparities in Healthcare Utilization: New Evidence from Employer Mandate” (with Reshad Osmani), 2024. The Review of Black Political Economy 52(2): 143-169.

• “A note on the relationship between COVID-19 and stock market return: evidence from South Asia” (with Md Arafat Rahman, Muhammad Kamran, Pakeezah Butt), 2021. International Journal of Islamic and Middle Eastern Finance and Management, 15(2): 359-371, https://doi.org/10.1108/IMEFM-03-2021-0124 

Pre-PhD Research:

• “Determinants of Service Quality and Impact of Service Quality and Consumers' Characteristics on Channel Selection,” with Saida Sultana, 2015, British Food Journal, 117(8): 2078-2097, https://doi.org/10.1108/BFJ-12-2014-0431 

Interdisciplinary Publications

• ``Economic and Demographic Factors Associated with Antenatal Care Utilization in Bangladesh: An Ordered Response Analysis using Cross-Sectional Data", with Shuvongkar Sarkar, Md Kamruzzaman, and Md.Mozaffar Hossain. Accepted at Health Science Reports. 

• “Explaining the Role of Socioeconomic, Healthcare Access, and Infrastructural Shifts in Nutritional Transition among Bangladeshi Women during 2004–2018” (with Promit Chowdhury, Sorif Hossain, & Karar Zunaid Ahsan), 2024. Public Health, 236: 268-273. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.puhe.2024.08.010 

• “Contraceptive uses among married women in Bangladesh: a systematic review and meta-analyses” (with Sorif Hossain, Tahmina Akter, Md Mohsin, Md Momin Islam, Promit Barua Chowdhury), 2024. Journal of Health, Population and Nutrition 43:10. 

• “Predicting nutritional status for women of childbearing age from their economic, health, and demographic features: A supervised machine learning approach” (with Kang Rhee, Mohammad Shabbir Hasan, & Karar Zunaid Ahsan), 2023. PLoS ONE 18(5): e0277738. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0277738 

• “Regional education and wealth-related inequalities in malnutrition among women in Bangladesh” (with Sorif Hossain and Rajon Banik), 2022. Public Health Nutrition, 25(6): 1639-1657, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1368980021003840 

Works in progress

• “The Impact of Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers' Laws on Maternal Mortality", with Babasoji Oyemakinde and Kang Rhee. 

• "Trade Policy Uncertainty and Employment Structure: Evidence from the Korean Manufacturing Sector", with Kang Rhee. 

• "Gender Differences in Child Nutrition: Evidence from the Demographic and Health Surveys".

• `Understanding COVID-19 Testing Decisions: Evidence from Machine Learning and Survey Data," with Kang Keun Rhee. 

• "Pro-active Health Behaviors and COVID-19 Vaccine", with Kang Rhee and Chizuruoke Onyedim. 

• “Long COVID, Economic Vulnerability, and Health Disparities: Evidence from Machine Learning and National Health Interview Survey Data",  with Kang Rhee.

• “The Effect of Workweek Reduction Policy on the Labor Market and Health Outcomes: Evidence from the Labor Legislation in South Korea."