Amen Jalal

I’m an economics PhD student at the London School of Economics, working on development, environmental and labor economics.

I will join Harvard University as an Assistant Professor at the Harvard Kennedy School in August 2027, after a year as an Academy Scholar at the Harvard Academy, starting August 2026.

Publications

What Happens When Women Suddenly Stop Receiving Cash Transfers?

Journal of Public Economics.

with N. Iqbal, M. Mahmud, K. Vyborny.

Abstract

Female-targeted cash transfers are widely used as a policy tool to enhance women’s empowerment. However, little is known about what happens when payments stop – whether due to budget cuts, program changes, or recipient graduation. We study how women are affected by unanticipated program exit, and whether they experience backlash when they stop bringing cash home. Using a regression discontinuity-in-differences design around a revised eligibility threshold, we follow 2333 women exiting Pakistan’s largest cash transfer program, surveying them before program exit and one year after it. Drawing on comprehensive measures of empowerment, intimate partner violence, and well-being, we find no evidence of negative impacts a year after exit. These results suggest that the gains experienced by women during the program are not undone by adverse reactions upon exit.

Working papers

Screening Women Out? Pay Transparency in Job Postings Job Market Paper

Selected for the ReStud and EALE job market tours. Won Outstanding Paper Award. Coverage: World Bank.

Abstract

Up to half of the gender pay gap stems from women's sorting into low-wage firms. Do women prefer amenities to wages, or face barriers to search? I tackle this question using data on 29 million job applications from Pakistan's largest job search platform, combined with firm and worker surveys and a field experiment mandating pay transparency. I document that large, high-paying firms are more likely to omit salaries in job ads and less likely to offer flexibility – an amenity women value slightly more than men. When pay is disclosed, men and women respond similarly to wages. But when undisclosed, behaviors diverge: men search randomly, while women sort negatively on pay. A theoretical framework shows that pay non-disclosure amplifies small gender differences in amenity preferences into large gender gaps in applications. To test whether transparency closes these gaps, I randomize mandatory versus optional pay disclosure in 20,088 jobs across 8,906 firms on the platform. The experiment leaves large-firm pay and amenities unchanged. Yet women's applications to these firms increase 95%, and men's 59%, reversing the gender gap in directed search. This implies women do not prefer flexibility to wages. Rather, they turn to flexibility when they cannot access wages. Meanwhile, large firms most exposed to mandated transparency become 30% more likely to disclose pay post-experiment, suggesting they overestimated the costs of transparency.

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

Revise & Resubmit, Review of Economic Studies.

with O. Bandiera, N. Roussille. Coverage: VoxDev.

Abstract

Even in traditional societies, men and women graduate from college at increasingly similar rates. Yet their paths diverge upon labor market entry: men work while most women stay home. What drives this divergence? Tracking 2,400 college students in Pakistan, we show that men and women hold similarly high work aspirations at graduation and subsequently apply to jobs and receive offers at comparable rates. Yet a 27 pp gender employment gap emerges within six months, driven by women rejecting offers far more often than men. A key predictor of women’s job acceptance decision is the timing of search: those who apply within two months of graduation are much more likely to be employed later. To test causality and uncover mechanisms, we randomize a modest incentive to apply early. The intervention shifts search earlier for both genders, raises women's employment by ~20% while leaving men's unaffected, thereby closing a third of the gender gap. Employment gains are concentrated among women who underestimate how soon marriage activities arise, revealing that they delayed job search under an “illusion of time.” For these women, early job search can initiate a self-reinforcing cycle: by entering the labor force before the marriage market, they attract more progressive suitors, which in turn can create a more supportive environment for sustained employment.

Can Competition Reduce Corruption?

with M. Haseeb, K. Vyborny, A. Quispe. Revised draft coming soon.

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.

Select works in progress

Heat Insurance at Work

with A. Pople, P. Simpson, K. Srivastava, E. Zou, O. Bandiera. Implementation on-going.

Abstract

Heatwaves, intensified by climate change, hit the poorest the hardest. Many are exposed to dangerous temperatures through outdoor or factory-based work, and have limited access to adaptive resources. How can social protection evolve to address the growing losses caused by extreme heat? We conduct a randomized controlled trial among low-income workers in Delhi, India, comparing the effects of temperature-indexed heat alerts, anticipatory daily wage payments delivered before heat events, and same-day daily wage payments delivered during heatwaves. We measure impacts on labour supply, adaptive behaviours, health, and financial wellbeing. The design separately identifies the value of information, the value of cash, and the value of acting ahead of heatwaves.

Direct Damage, Indirect Costs: The Incidence of Natural Disasters

with P. Simpson. Preparing working paper.

Abstract

Natural disasters affect not only the locations they physically strike, but also surrounding areas through labour and product market linkages. As a result, the economic incidence of disasters differs substantially from their physical footprint. We argue this in the context of Pakistan's devastating 2022 floods, combining an original panel survey of 5,100 rural households with satellite imagery, administrative damage data, and a re-centered hydrological instrument to identify both own and surrounding flood exposure. Conditioning only on own exposure, flooding appears to leave households largely unharmed (or even better off). Accounting for surrounding exposure overturns this picture: holding own-flooding constant, a one-standard-deviation increase in surrounding flooding raises unemployment by 9 percentage points (pp) and self-employment by 13 pp. Local prices rise by 8-21%, while credit supply tightens, asset sales increase and real consumption falls. Yet disaster aid targets the directly affected, who are 12.6 pp (30.7%) more likely to receive aid. Our results show that disaster losses are governed by both direct and indirect exposure, yet policy targets direct physical damage, substantially under-compensating for the true welfare costs of large-scale climate shocks.

The Fundamental Need for Shelter: Evidence from the World’s Largest Home Reconstruction Program

with C. Naik, P. Simpson. Planning fieldwork.

Abstract

Psychologists have long argued that human needs are met in order of priority: until basic needs such as shelter are secured, attention and effort remain focused on them, delaying higher-order pursuits. This idea has implications for a range of economic outcomes — shaping, for instance, how much background risk a household bears and, thus, how willing it is to make high-risk, high-reward investments in the future. Despite its influence, the idea that needs follow a hierarchy has rarely been tested using credible causal evidence on economic behaviour. We provide such a test using the reconstruction of flood-destroyed homes in Sindh, Pakistan. Exploiting staggered disbursements of home-reconstruction grants, we compare otherwise-similar households that received funding just before and just after a program expansion. Combining administrative records with a survey of 6,000 households, we estimate the effects of home security on risk-taking, migration, health, schooling, and productive investment.

Policy writing

Using Biometrics to Deliver Cash Payments to Women. 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.