Amen Jalal

(My name is pronounced Aey-mun Ja-laal)

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I am a 5th year PhD student in economics at the London School of Economics. I have a Bachelors in economics from Yale University. Before starting the PhD, I worked at the World Bank as a research assistant in the DIME and ID4D teams.

I work on labor, gender and environmental issues in low income countries.

Works in progress

Screening Women Out? Experimenting with Salary Disclosure in Job Ads

Experiment ongoing. Supported by G2LMLIC. [ AEA registry ]

Click for abstract Firm premiums can widen gender gaps in employment and pay if women face barriers to accessing high-paying firms or negotiating the available surplus. This paper examines whether the absence of salary information in job ads restricts women’s access to high paying jobs. I find that salaries are more likely to be hidden when higher, and firms – especially larger ones – strategically use salary non-disclosure to overcome costly screening, by encouraging applicants to self-screen instead. However, this practice disadvantages women, who, like men, apply more to higher-paying jobs when salaries are visible but, unlike men, do not direct search when they are hidden. To investigate, I conduct an experiment on Pakistan’s largest job search platform involving around 17,000 jobs and 7,500 firms. Treated jobs are required to disclose salary ranges, while control jobs retain the option to hide. The intervention has limited effects on advertised salaries, but leads to a 54% increase in applications, driven by greater interest in large firms whose higher salaries are newly revealed. The reallocation of search from small to large firms is 37-percentage-points higher for women, closing existing gender gaps in sorting. While the average quality of applicants declines modestly, the top applicants to treated jobs are higher ability, and 10% more likely to be female. Finally, the intervention reveals a trade-off: while salary hiding modestly deters less-qualified applicants, it also screens out the highest-ability women.


Coping with Catastrophe: Pakistan’s 2022 Floods

(with Pol Simpson)

Two annual follow-up surveys completed. Supported by the IGC, STEG and Harvard University. [ IGC Blog Post ]

Click for abstract Extreme weather events are becoming more frequent due to climate change, yet we know little about how unprecedented climate shocks impact the most vulnerable populations. In this project, we investigate the effects of the 2022 floods in Pakistan, which affected 33 million households and left one third of the country under water. Using a pre-flood census, we draw a random sample of 5,100 low-income, rural households across 6 districts of Sindh, whom we track and survey one and two years after the floods. These households vary in their local exposure to the 2022 floods. We study (i) the impact of the floods on these households, (ii) how they cope with these impacts and make forward-looking adaptations, and (iii) how flood impacts evolve over time. We exploit plausibly random local variation in flood water inundation – i.e., precipitation interacted with topography – conditional on historical rain and flood risk. Our outcomes include flood damages (e.g. loss of income or assets, health impacts, and disruption of social networks and trade), coping strategies (e.g. drawdown of savings, sale of assets, new loans, increased labour supply, changes to educational or nuturitional investments) and adaptation (e.g. diversification of networks or assets, and migration).


The Illusion of Time: Job Search and Female Labor Force Participation

(with Oriana Bandiera and Nina Roussille)

Draft available soon. Supported by Gates Foundation, STICERD (LSE), and RISF (LSE). [ AEA registry ]

Click for abstract This paper studies why the employment rate of college-educated women remains low in Pakistan, and tests an intervention to increase it. Following over 1,000 college students, we uncover three facts about the education to employment pipeline. First, at graduation, women's beliefs about their likelihood of working are high (72%), and comparable to men's. Second, in the six months following graduation, women send nearly as many job applications and receive more job offers than men. However, women turn down these offers at much higher rates than men, such that only 37% of them work six months post-graduation, vs. 64% of men. Third, a key predictor of employment for women, but not for men, is job search timing: women who start applying promptly after graduation are twice as likely to work. To estimate the causal impact of timing, we experimentally shift job applications earlier. This intervention increases women’s, but not men's, employment by 6.6 pp (20%) overall and by 9.1 pp (37.6%) in firm work six months post-graduation, an effect that persists 14 months later. Women from traditional families drive our treatment effects. These heterogeneous effects provide a natural explanation for the role of timing: as traditional families' attention progressively turns to marriage post-graduation, opposition to women's work increases. In line with this explanation, we provide evidence that timing matters only for women who lack foresight about the competing forces of the marriage market.


Can Competition Reduce Corruption?

(with Muhammad Haseeb and Kate Vyborny)

Draft available soon. Supported by the World Bank’s ID4D and the Gates Foundation. [ Policy brief ]

Click for abstract Corruption remains a major obstacle to the delivery of public services in developing countries. We study whether competition among public officials can mitigate corruption, leveraging exogenous changes to the market structure of the payment agents responsible for delivering government cash transfers in Pakistan. A reform that increased the market power of these agents led to a 240% increase in the probability that a beneficiary had to pay an involuntary bribe to the payment agent to access the cash transfer. However, in areas with 1 standard deviation higher competition, this increase in bribe payments is almost completely eliminated, suggesting that public officials are responsive to market incentives. We rule out that mechanisms other than competition drive these results, such as strategic agent entry, changes in market access, and differences in monitoring efforts or cash recipient characteristics.


What Happens When Cash Transfers Suddenly Stop?

(with Nasir Iqbal, Mahreen Mahmud, Kate Vyborny)

Draft available soon. Supported by IFPRI and IPA

Click for abstract Cash transfers are the most popular form of social protection globally. However, they may not pay out indefinitely due to budget cuts, changes to program design, or graduation of recipients from the program. How do low-income households cope after long-running cash transfers suddenly stop? Using a regression discontinuity-in-differences design around a revised eligibility threshold, we investigate the effect of being exited from Pakistan's largest cash transfer program. One year after discontinuation, we find no significant impacts on households' economic outcomes or well-being. Two years later, we find a 5% drop in consumption (40% of the value of the transfer) and a 6 pp (12.5%) decrease in women's mobility (p<0.1), defined as market visits unaccompanied by family.


Teaching