Sofia Amaral

I am an Economist at the World Bank in the South Asia Region Gender Innovation Lab.

Previously I was an Economist (Assistant Professor equivalent) at the ifo Institute and the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in Germany, leading the Leibniz Junior Research Group on The Economics of Violence Against Women. I am a CESifo Research Affiliate, an IZA Research Fellow, and an affiliate of the Center for Crime, Justice and Policing at the University of Birmingham in the UK. I am also affiliated with the World Bank's Center for Research on Women and Jobs and the Pakistan Data and Evidence Lab. At the World Bank, I am part of the Social Policy Department and the Data Talent Board.

My research interests include violence against women and children, gender, development, and economics of crime. The context of my research has been India, UK, El Salvador, Mozambique, Pakistan and Bangladesh. 

News:

• July 2026: The paper "Debiasing Law Enforcement Officers: Evidence from an Expressive Arts Intervention in India" will be presented at the NBER Summer Institute (Economics of Crime) 

• June 2026: The paper "Deterrence or Backlash? Arrests and the Dynamics of Domestic Violence has been accepted at the Journal of Political Economy.

• April 2026:The paper "Experimental Evidence on Response Rates and Data Measurement in Phone versus Online Surveys" is now R&R at Nature Scientific Reports.

• March 2026: I joined the IZA Network as a Research Fellow.