Naila Maya Shofia

Research

My research lies at the intersection of development economics, political economy, and family and labor economics. I study how social norms, identity, beliefs, and institutions shape individual behavior and economic and political outcomes. My work spans topics including women’s labor-market participation, political accountability, marriage and partner choice, and traditional economic activities. Methodologically, I combine carefully designed field and survey experiments with large-scale observational data, using quasi-experimental methods, randomized interventions, and discrete-choice experiments to identify causal relationships and uncover underlying mechanisms.

PUBLISHED & FORTHCOMING

Why Veil? Religious Headscarves and the Economic Role of Women

Forthcoming, Review of Economic Studies

Awarded UniCredit Best Job Market Paper Award

Using ~250,000 school photos and labor-market data from Indonesia, I examine how economic opportunities shape women’s visible religious expression. I show that female-intensive labor demand shocks increase veiling, particularly in contexts of moderate segregation, without changing underlying religiosity or political preferences.

Paper | Online Appendix | Replication (ReStud)

Gender and the Politics of Death: Female Representation, Political and Developmental Context, and Population Health in a Cross-National Panel

with Ross Macmillan (Bocconi University) and Wendy Sigle (London School of Economics and Political Science)

Demography 55, 1905–1934 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-018-0697-0

Does greater female political representation improve population health? Using data from 155 countries between 1990 and 2014, this study examines the relationship between women’s representation in parliament and mortality. We find that high levels of female representation are associated with substantially lower mortality, with particularly strong relationships in less-developed countries and weaker democracies. The findings highlight how the consequences of women’s political representation depend on the broader political and development context.

Paper | Online Appendix | Replication Material

WORKING PAPERS

You are Fired, My Lord: Experimental Evidence on Democratic Narrative and Accountability

with Piero Stanig (Bocconi University)

Awarded The 2025 SEAPRG Best Paper Award, American Political Science Association

We study how citizens' lay understanding of democracy could shape how they vote. Using a multi-wave survey experiment around Indonesia's 2024 General Election, we show that people with different understandings of democracy choose different types of politicians. Informing them about the principal-agent relationship in political representation changes the kind of politicians they prefer as well as how they vote in the actual-stake election. We provide causal evidence on narrative on political accountability.

Working Paper | AEA Registry | Intervention Material

Wearing Your Religion: How Labor Markets Prize Visible Identity

with Stefano Fiorin (Bocconi University) and Eliana La Ferrara (Harvard University)

Collaborating with one of the largest online job portals in Indonesia, we study how visible religious symbols shape employers’ evaluations and hiring decisions using a large-scale survey experiment with more than 1,200 employers and 1,800 jobseekers in Indonesia. We vary the visibility of religious symbols in hypothetical candidate profiles and examine how this affects ratings, interview likelihood, and salary offers, and explore what might explain these effects.

Working Paper | AEA Registry

Modern Love, Traditional Norms: Mating in The 21st Century

with Ornella Darova (the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa)

As women catch up with men in education and the labor market, traditional models of partner choice may no longer fit. Using a discrete choice experiment with 2,500 single adults, we show that partner preferences have evolved faster than beliefs about them. Higher-income women place less weight on a partner’s earnings, while higher-income men place more—eventually overtaking women at the top of the income distribution. Yet beliefs remain anchored in traditional gender norms. A marriage-market model suggests that correcting these misperceptions could meaningfully reduce marriage-market mismatch.

Working Paper | AEA Registry

Sectarian Conflict and Identity Formation in a Consolidating Democracy

This paper examines how competition between factions within politically influential majority groups can intensify ethnic and religious conflict. I develop a new measure of factional competition and apply it to Indonesia’s religious organizational landscape. Greater factional competition is strongly associated with more severe religious violence, even after accounting for conventional measures of fragmentation and polarization and a broad set of potential confounders. The relationship is specific to religious conflict and does not extend to crime, domestic violence, or other forms of conflict.

Working Paper

SELECTED RESEARCH IN PROGRESS

Governing Intangible Commons: Evidence from the Indonesian Traditional Embroidery Industry

with Yasusuki Sawada (The University of Tokyo) and Mari Tanaka (The University of Tokyo and Hitotsubashi University)

Can traditional industries adapt to economic modernization without losing the cultural heritage that makes them distinctive? Focusing on the traditional embroidery industry in rural Indonesia, this project studies whether intangible commons—shared cultural heritage, identity, and collective values—can become an economic asset. We evaluate interventions combining cultural-value-based marketing, cooperation among producers, and connections with designers and market intermediaries to examine whether they can expand market opportunities while sustaining traditional production.

AEA Registry

Money or ideology: The motivation of politicians in a young democracy

This paper examines whether political ideology shapes politicians’ behavior in office. Using a novel hand-collected panel of wealth declarations from more than 1,500 Indonesian MPs, I track changes in politicians’ personal wealth while serving in parliament. MPs from Islamist parties experience significantly lower wealth growth than their non-ideological counterparts, a difference that appears to reflect distinct strategies of mobilizing electoral support. The findings suggest that ideology can serve as a disciplining force on politicians even in a highly clientelistic political environment.

From Job to Careers: Skill Investment and Career Ladders in Indonesian F&B Industry

with Kingcey Lei Nuo (PhD Student, Dept. of Economics, National University of Singapore)

Can entry-level service jobs become pathways for skill development and upward mobility? This project studies whether making career paths and promotion criteria more transparent helps workers invest in relevant skills and advance within firms. In partnership with a large food and beverage company in Indonesia, we evaluate a transparent, skill-based career ladder and examine its effects on skill acquisition, performance, retention, and promotion. We also study how information spreads among coworkers, how workplace peers shape workers’ responses, and whether structured evidence on skills improves promotion decisions.

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