Zaeem-Al Ehsan

For the World Bank, I led the data collection effort on the second round of a representative panel survey in Cox's Bazar. It was a multi-topic survey on host communities and recently displaced Rohingya populations residing in Cox’s Bazar that focuses on socio-economic outcomes and access to services. The survey comprises of ~5000 households and ~9000 adults. Yes, my anxiety is through the roof.

Albeit shortlived, I had the opportunity of working with Viola Asri, in going over data analysis of an RCT she had undertaken in Bangladesh. The intervention was to see how big of an impact training government officials had on their ability to target Old Age Allowance beneficiaries.

Before joining the World Bank, I worked at a leading NGO in Bangladesh, SAJIDA Foundation, as part of its Challenge Fund and Investment team. I primarily worked on finding budding social startups/enterprises that were working on creating a social impact.  This was an incredible opportunity since I got to interact with brilliant founders who wanted to make a difference in the world.

I also interned at two policy think tanks in Bangladesh, Economic Research Group (ERG) and Policy Research Institute (PRI) of Bangladesh. I worked on data collection pertaining to the external sector, as well as data analysis on the gravity model of trade for Bangladesh at PRI. At ERG, I got to work on web scraping freelancer information off of freelancer websites as well as coming up with a quantifiable definition of "Startups". 

My research interests are still evolving, but I am primarily drawn towards Development Economics.