Research & Publications

Publications

Journal Article The Cost of Discipline? Exploring the Impact of Corporal Punishment on Children's Foundational Learning Skills in Bangladesh
With Marjan Hossain, Sheikh Touhidul Haque
International Journal of Educational Development, 2025, Online Appendix
Using 2019 MICS data and an instrumental variable approach, we find that corporal punishment in Bangladesh significantly reduces children's foundational reading and numeracy skills, particularly among boys. The findings underscore the need for stronger enforcement of bans and targeted early-childhood interventions.

Working Papers

Working Paper The Social Collateral of Informal Insurance: Evidence from Dyadic Tie Formation in Indian Villages
Does formal credit crowd out informal insurance networks in poor rural economies? We model informal insurance as a network-formation game in which multiplex social embeddedness—kinship, shared worship, daily contact—serves as social collateral that lowers maintenance costs and raises reneging costs. Testing on 75 Indian villages using 342,777 dyads and two-sided household fixed effects, we find kinship increases the probability of a risk-sharing tie by 56 percentage points even with both households' fixed effects absorbed. Where microfinance penetrated, roughly 93 percent of the kinship effect is preserved, demonstrating that informal risk-sharing networks are resiliently anchored in social relationships that formal credit does not readily dislodge.
Working Paper Connected and Protected? Mobile Phone Ownership and Women's Attitudes Toward Intimate Partner Violence in Bangladesh
Under Review at Economic Development and Cultural Change (EDCC)
Using pooled data from the 2017–18 and 2022 Bangladesh Demographic and Health Surveys (N = 37,881), this paper estimates the effect of women's mobile phone ownership on attitudes toward intimate partner violence. Using demand-side community phone penetration and supply-side cell-tower coverage instruments, phone ownership reduces the probability of endorsing wife beating by 13.6 to 22.5 percentage points, with effects concentrated among child brides. Phone ownership also increases decision-making participation, bank account ownership, and media exposure, consistent with empowerment and norm-updating channels.
Working Paper The Economics of the Long Con: Reputation Trapping in Decentralised Trust Networks
In anonymous, decentralised markets, actors rely exclusively on reputation systems for counterparty screening. We develop a repeated-game model of "reputation trapping"—the Long Con equilibrium—in which a rational agent builds a pristine reputation through a sequence of small honest transactions and then defects on a single high-value transaction before exiting. Validating the theory on Bitcoin OTC and Bitcoin Alpha signed trust networks (N = 18 confirmed events), interrupted time-series regressions reveal a sharp 9.11 rating point drop at defection, and Kolmogorov-Smirnov tests confirm operators strategically target high-eigenvector-centrality raters.
Working Paper Cognitive Assortative Mating and the Intergenerational Transmission of Human Capital in Developing Countries
With Arishfa Nawar Iqra
We examine the intergenerational transmission of cognitive skill in Indonesia using two decades of IFLS data tracking fluid intelligence across three generations. Linking parents to children, parental cognition transmits strongly (mid-parent elasticity of 0.36; maternal elasticity of 0.51 after measurement-error correction). Spouses sort strongly on measured cognition (rho = 0.38), accounting for one-quarter of transmitted cognitive advantage. Grandparent cognition exerts direct predictive power beyond parents, and transmission operates largely independently of household consumption, indicating a direct skill-to-skill channel amplified by assortative mating.
Working Paper Spatio-Temporal Predictive Modeling of Morphological Evolution in the Lower Meghna Estuary: A Risk-Adjusted Machine Learning Framework for Sustainable Land Settlement (2025–2030) with Md Mohsin Hossain
Using 35 years of Landsat and Sentinel-1 satellite imagery (1990–2025), this study presents a Risk-Adjusted Suitability Framework evaluating ConvLSTM vs. Random Forest models for 5-year morphological forecasting in the Lower Meghna Estuary. The model identifies 614 hectares of net land accretion by 2030 in Patuakhali District, mapping 199 hectares of high-stability land capable of supporting 332 landless families with an associated agricultural value of $443,100 USD/year.
Working Paper A Safe Space of One's Own: Gender-Differentiated Effects of a Creative, Play-Based After-School Programme on Host-Community Adolescents in Cox's Bazar
With Shaila Ahmed, Marjan Hossain, and Justine Howard
We evaluate the Creative Club Programme—a 12-week, low-cost, structured after-school programme of creative expression and play—through a cluster-randomized controlled trial across 20 schools and 300 host-community adolescents in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh. While average psychosocial impacts are modest, girls register significant gains in well-being, resilience, pro-equality attitudes, and reading (0.3–0.6 SD), whereas boys show only directionally positive effects. We interpret this through a binding-constraint lens where structured social space relaxes a constraint that is tight for girls but slack for boys.
Working Paper Unintended Spillovers: School Bans, Home Punishment, and Child Emotional Development
With Arishfa Nawar Iqra and Md. Robiul Hossain
Under Review at Child Development
Corporal punishment remains common despite evidence of harm. Using survey data and an instrumental-variables strategy, this paper examines its effects on children’s psychological outcomes. Linear Probability Models show strong positive associations with emotional regulation problems and anxiety/depression, but 2SLS estimates reveal a causal effect only on emotional regulation difficulties—especially for girls—with no consistent impact on anxiety or depression.
Working Paper Belief Measurement: The Role of Survey Incentives
With Atiya Rahman
We investigate if monetary incentives improve the accuracy of reported beliefs about social norms in rural Bangladesh. Results from a randomized survey experiment show that while incentives modestly reduce misperceptions, these effects are statistically fragile after adjusting for multiple hypothesis testing, suggesting limited cost-efficiency for sensitive norm research.
Working Paper Perception Versus Reality: Social Media, Elopement Fears, and Marriage Decisions in Rural Bangladesh
With Munshi Sulaiman and Shaila Ahmed
Using RCT data from rural Bangladesh, we examine the link between daughters' social media use and parental fears of elopement. We find that social media use increases perceived elopement risk and the likelihood of self-chosen marriage. However, the program intervention significantly reduces early marriage rates, particularly among social media users, highlighting the need to integrate digital literacy with empowerment.
Working Paper Women’s Property Rights and Fertility: Cross-Country Evidence
With Shaila Ahmed, Akmam Binte Arif, and Sheikh Touhidul Haque
Using a balanced panel of 136 countries (2002–2022), this paper instruments an index of women’s ownership and inheritance rights with colonial legal origin to estimate causal effects on fertility. Strengthening property rights from the 25th to the 75th percentile increases the total fertility rate by about 0.50 births per woman, a result robust across specifications, bounds tests, and regional and income subsamples.

Selected Work in Progress

In Progress Does Public Health Insurance Stimulate Entrepreneurship? Evidence from ACA Medicaid Expansion and County-Level Business Formation
Update: Empirical analysis completed; paper writing and revision in progress.
In Progress Breaking the Coordination Trap: Strategic Complementarities in Household Education Investment
Update: Analysis and manuscript writing are ongoing.
In Progress Early Marriage and Perceived Risk of IPV
With Atiya Rahman, Ben D'Exelle, Pieter Serneels, and Zaki Wahhaj.
Update: Fieldwork and survey experiment completed; data analysis and paper writing in progress.
In Progress Optimizing Cash Transfers with Social Empowerment Interventions to Reduce Child Marriage in Bangladesh
With Munshi Sulaiman, Shaila Ahmed, Khandker Wahedur Rahman, Sakib Mahmood.
AER RCT Registration. Update: Analysis is ongoing with endline report first draft completed.
In Progress Play-Based Learning in Crisis Contexts: A Randomized Controlled Trial on Educational and Psychosocial Outcomes in Host Community Children
With Shaila Ahmed, Justine Howard, Sakila Yesmin, Muhammad Towkir Hossain.
AEA RCT Registration. Update: Both baseline and endline survey is completed; analysis and paper writing are ongoing.

Policy Writings/Reports

Research Projects

This section includes the projects that I worked only as a (Trainee) Research Associate

Partnership for Research on Progress and Resilience in Education (PREPARE) Bangladesh Round 1 and 2
In collaboration with Centre for Global Development (CGD) Europe
This study assesses foundational literacy and numeracy among children aged 5–18 in Bangladesh using phone-based ASER assessments. We find that while enrollment is higher for girls and younger children, significant learning gaps persist, particularly in rural areas and among those exposed to shocks like COVID-19 and natural disasters.
Parenting-For-Adolescent (PFA) Program (Pilot Study)
With Centre for Global Development (CGD) Europe
Despite high educational aspirations, parents in the Ultra Poor Graduation Program often marry daughters early due to reputational fears and a lack of communication. This study tests a counseling intervention adapted from the CONNECT program to bridge the parent-adolescent gap, aiming to reduce conflict, lower early marriage rates, and increase secondary school enrollment.