Current Project(s):

2023-24

Promoting Investment in Solar Energy Across SMEs in Pakistan: The Role of Information Provision (with Azam Chaudhry, Phil Garner, and Nikita Grabher-Meyer)

South Asia is one of the most vulnerable regions to climate change impacts but also one with vast untapped renewable energy potential (World Bank, 2021). Pakistan, for example, is endowed with huge solar energy resources and utilizing just 0.071% of the country’s area for solar photovoltaic installations would meet its current electricity needs (World Bank, 2021). The transition to renewables would help the country not only fulfil its growing energy demand and curb its carbon emissions, but also mitigate the high cost and unreliability of electricity from the grid, which is almost universally cited by local firms as a major constraint to competitiveness (Bacon, 2019). While larger exporting firms have begun to adopt solar energy also to comply with the environmental standards imposed by their globally branded customers, the more neglected market segment of small-medium enterprises is falling behind, according to a local source active in the solar market. 

In this exploratory study, we will design and administer a survey across a sample of about 500 owners of small-medium manufacturing enterprises in the textile and food processing/storage sectors in Punjab to better understand the main structural, informational and behavioural barriers that prevent business owners from switching to greener energy sources such as solar power. In particular, we will elicit respondents’ risk preferences, their beliefs and attitudes around traditional and solar energy sources, as well as their intended behaviour or expected likelihood of adopting solar energy. In addition, we aim to conduct a randomized information experiment, embedded within the same survey, to test whether specific information provision is effective at changing respondents’ beliefs, attitudes and intentions in relation to purchasing solar energy. 

This research is funded by the International Growth Centre (UK).

Past Research:

2015-16

Pilot Benchmarking of Productivity in the Pakistani Garments Sector (with Chris Woodruff and Rocco MacChiavello, and Azam Chaudhry, Lahore School) 

There is significant potential for expansion in Pakistani exports especially keeping in mind the fact that the European Union has granted Pakistan GSP Plus status. That said, expanding exports must be accompanied by improvements in productivity if any export surges are to be sustained over the coming years. Theresa Chaudhry (Lahore School) and Azam Chaudhry (Lahore School) are working with Christopher Woodruff (University of Oxford) and Rocco MacChiavello (LSE) to benchmark the productivity of garment factories in Pakistan.  

See the results of the pilot here.

2012-13

Incentives and Productivity: Work Groups vs. Production Lines in Pakistani Electric Fan Production (with Chris Woodruff)

The fan sector is an important source of employment in the region around Gujrat in the Punjab province of Pakistan. Moreover, it is representative of other light engineering sectors in Pakistan. Exporting has developed as an important market for fans produced in Pakistan.

The project has been developed under the firm capabilities programme of the International Growth Centre (IGC) and is led by a team of researchers including Theresa Chaudhry (Lahore School) and Christopher Woodruff (University of Oxford) with help from Muhammad Haseeb (student, Warwick), Zunia Tirmazee (Lahore School) and Umair Ayaz (student, Georgia State). They have attempted to test whether short-term financial incentives can be used to decrease worker absenteeism in one of Gujrat’s leading fan factories. 

The results of the pilot are here.

The published paper: here.

2008-09

Causes and Consequences of Consanguineous Marriage in Pakistan (with Mushfiq Mobarak, Yale University)

Interviews of just over 1000 households were conducted in 70 randomly selected sampling clusters from nine (out of Punjab’s 35 districts).  A total of 4643 pregnancies were reported by 391 first cousin (37.6% of the marriages) and 622 non consanguineous couples interviewed in the study.

Major objectives of the study: to more accurately measure the effects of consanguineous marriage, both negative and positive. On the negative side, the offspring of consanguineous marriages may be at greater risk of disease and infant and childhood death. The survey looks at the childhood morbidity and mortality of children born out of consanguineous and non-consanguineous marriages. On the positive side, there may be greater altruism toward the children of consanguineous unions through the extended family, because there is a greater genetic tie. In addition, given that consanguineous marriage reduces uncertainty about unobserved spousal characteristics, this may provide parents with a greater incentive to "invest" in their children, such as by educating daughters. Finally, are there other socioeconomic benefits of consanguineous marriage? Such as reducing dowry? Increasing empowerment of women? Decreasing violence toward women? The analysis will take an instrumental variables approach, to account for the possible endogeneity of cousin marriage. 

Access the publication here.

2008-09

Conditional-Cash Transfers for Girls’ Secondary Schooling in Rural Punjab, Pakistan

The government of Punjab, starting in 2003, offered a conditional cash transfer (CCT) of Rs 200 per month, to girls in class 6 to 8 with minimum 80 percent attendance, in order to increase the educational attainment of girls in districts with less than 40 percent literacy.  The program was later was extended up to grade 10. 

Using data collected a survey of rural households in Punjab (supported by the British Academy and Lahore School of Economics), Theresa Chaudhry (Lahore School) and colleagues are analyzing the impacts of the Female Secondary School Stipend Program (FSSSP), a component of Punjab Education Sector Reform Program (PERSP) on school enrollment, middle and high school completion, marriage and fertility outcomes for eligible girls in rural areas of stipend recipient districts. 

This analysis uses triple difference-in-difference analyses to show the effects of program after ten years of implementation. The relevant control groups in this study include elder sisters and/or cousins in stipend districts, girls of similar age, their elder sisters and/or cousins in non-stipend districts.