Amen Jalal

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

Photo of Amen Jalal

Photo by Surbhi Bharadwaj

Hello! 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.

My research interests are in development, labor, gender and environmental economics.

Working papers

The Illusion of Time: Gender Gaps in Job Search and Employment

with Oriana Bandiera and Nina Roussille

NBER Working Paper. Supported by Gates Foundation, STICERD (LSE), and RISF (LSE). AEA registry here.

Click for abstract In countries with low female employment, college-educated women often transition directly from education to homemaking. Does this reflect informed, forward-looking choices or unanticipated constraints? We study this question in Pakistan, where two-thirds of college-educated women remain out of the labor force. Tracking 2,400 college-graduating students, we document that men and women start their search with similar work aspirations, apply at similar rates, and receive comparable numbers of job offers. Yet a 27 pp employment gap emerges within six months post-graduation. This gap stems largely from timing: for women alone, there is a critical window, immediately post-graduation, during which job search is associated with much higher chances of employment. To test whether this relationship is causal, we randomize a modest incentive to apply early. By shifting search into the early window, the intervention raises women's employment by ~20\% but leaves men's employment unaffected, closing a third of the gender gap. Our evidence suggests that applying early enables women to start working before demands from the marriage market arise. Treatment effects are driven by women who underestimate how quickly these demands materialize, revealing an “illusion of time.” This illusion can be persistent since women in our sample recognize the barriers to employment faced by their female peers, but overestimate their own ability to overcome them.


Select works in progress

Screening Women Out? Pay Transparency and Job Search Job Market Paper

Outstanding Paper Award at the Discrimination and Diversity Workshop, 2025.

Supported by G2LMLIC. AEA registry here.

Click for abstract Women sort into low-paying firms for otherwise similar jobs. This may reflect a preference for the non-wage amenities at such firms, or a lack of information about their price: the foregone wages. This paper studies whether the absence of salary information in job search restricts women's access to high-paying firms. I document that large, high-paying firms are more likely to obscure salaries in job ads, and less likely to offer flexibility. When salaries are disclosed, both men and women apply more to high-paying firms; but when salaries are concealed, only women refrain. To causally test whether salary transparency can redirect women's search, I field an experiment on Pakistan's leading job search platform. It covers $\sim$ 20,000 jobs and 8,900 firms, requiring treated jobs to disclose salary ranges, while control jobs retain the option to hide. Posted salaries of treated jobs barely change, but applications rise by 49% on average, and by 65% for large firms. The reallocation of search from small to large firms is 42.6 percentage points stronger for women, closing the gender gap in sorting. That women pivot to high-wage, low-flexibility firms when pay is transparent suggests that gendered sorting arises not from gendered preferences, but from gendered costs of information frictions.


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 Disaster response policies often focus on immediate relief or long-term reconstruction, but what happens in between? We examine how the impacts of Pakistan's 2022 floods evolve over two years, by collecting panel data from 5,100 low-income households across six districts, and leveraging exogenous local variation in topography and rainfall to estimate causal effects. One year post-floods, a more severe flood shock depleted household assets and reduced labor demand, prompting households to sell assets, commute further for work, and turn to self-employment. They also received more formal and informal aid. As a result, they were able to sustain consumption levels on par with less affected households. However, by year two these patterns are reversed: more flooded households have returned to private employment, working similar hours as less flooded households, but doing so at lower wages. They are also more likely to report reducing consumption and health expenditure, taking new loans and drawing down savings to make ends meet. We also find that more intense floods have persistent negative impacts on physical and mental health - particularly women’s. These findings highlight significant medium-term needs for consumption, health, and mental health support among disaster-affected households.


Heat Insurance at Work

with Ashley Pople, Pol Simpson and Eddy Zou

Implementation on-going

Click for abstract Heatwaves, intensified by climate change, hit the poorest the hardest. Many are exposed to dangerous temperatures through outdoor work or limited access to adaptive resources. In 2024, 37 cities in India surpassed 45°C (113°F), and around 40,000 heat stroke cases were reported. How can social protection systems evolve to address the growing losses caused by extreme heat? We evaluate an innovative intervention in India that offers automatic daily wage payments to low-income workers when temperatures exceed a predetermined threshold. Developed by the Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) – a union representing over 3 million informal workers – the scheme is the world’s first parametric heat insurance product targeting earnings loss. We use a randomized encouragement design, incentivizing SEWA officers to promote enrollment in 2,821 treatment villages, while 2,821 control villages receive no targeted outreach. Panel survey data – combined with high-frequency measurement during the hot season – will allow us to estimate impacts on labor supply, financial decisions, health, consumption, and adaptive behavior. We also assess willingness to pay relative to actuarially fair pricing, providing evidence on the potential for commercial insurance-based heat protection.


Can Competition Reduce Corruption?

with Muhammad Haseeb, Kate Vyborny and Alex Quispe

Draft available soon. Supported by the World Bank’s ID4D and the Gates Foundation.

Click for abstract Corruption remains a major obstacle to the delivery of public services in developing countries. We study whether competition between service delivery agents can mitigate corruption, leveraging exogenous changes to the market structure of agents responsible for delivering government cash transfers in Pakistan. A reform that increased the market power of these agents led to a 29.1 pp increase in the probability that a beneficiary had to pay an involuntary bribe to access the cash transfer. However, in areas with 1 standard deviation higher competition, this increase in bribe payments is almost completely eliminated. We rule out that mechanisms other than competition drive these results, such as strategic entry, changes in market access, and differences in monitoring efforts or cash recipient characteristics.


Policy writing

Using Biometrics to Deliver Cash Payments to Women: Early Results from an Impact Evaluation in Pakistan. World Bank 2022.

Collecting Accurate Data on Intimate Partner Violence. World Bank 2025.

Equilibrium Effects of a Billion Trees on Ecosystems and Livelihoods. IGC 2025.

Teaching