I am an Associate Professor of Economics at the American University in Bulgaria. Additionally, I am a fellow at the Centre for Economic Research in Pakistan (CERP) and the International Growth Center (IGC). 

My research interests lie in the areas of behavioral economics and development economics with a particular focus on health, gender, and firms’ behavior. I employ field, lab, lab-in-the-field experiments, and surveys to understand economic decision-making and its behavioral underpinnings.

I have done research projects on the incentives and preferences of public sector personnel, the role of media liberalization, and firms' behavior. My work has appeared in the Journal of the European Economic Association, Economics Letters, and Oxford Economic Papers. In my recent research, I collect primary data through randomized controlled trials (RCT) and secondary (primarily) administrative data to generate insights to answer questions that are motivated by and engage with policy. My research has been funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), the International Growth Centre (IGC), and Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA).

My Ph.D. is from the University of Southern California (USC). I have served as an Assistant Professor of Economics at the Friedrich-Alexander University (FAU) Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany, and Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) in Pakistan. Before LUMS, I was a postdoctoral fellow at the Evidence for Policy Design (EPoD) Harvard University and University of California San Diego. I did my undergraduate at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) in Pakistan where I was a National Outreach Program scholar.

I am a first-generation graduate from an underrepresented minority.  

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Profile on International Growth Center (IGC) 

Profile on Private Enterprise Development in Low-Income Countries (PEDL)