Home Placements Faculty Portal Student Portal Centre for Research GIDS ITC Faculty Positions Available Academic Calendar Code of Conduct Accessibility E-library

Mahniya Zafar

Mahniya Zafar is a Senior Teaching and Research Fellow at the Lahore School of Economics, where she has been affiliated since 2016. She holds an M.Phil. in Economics and a BSc in Economics and Finance from the Lahore School of Economics. Her research focuses on Development Economics, Applied Microeconomics, Behavioral Economics, and Gender, with a particular interest in education, early childhood development, and women’s economic empowerment. Her recent projects examine early childhood development, the role of non-cognitive skills in academic performance, and behavioral interventions to increase technology adoption among female micro-entrepreneurs.

Google website link : https://sites.google.com/view/mahniya-zafar/publications

 

CV

PUBLICATIONS AND WORKING PAPERS

  1. “Impact of Mother’s Mass Media Exposure on Early Childhood Development: Urban vs Rural Analysis” (2025), BMC Health with Muhammad Afiq (The Urban Unit). 
  2. “Fostering Non-Cognitive Skills and Academic Performance: Experimental Evidence from Women’s-only Colleges in Pakistan” (2022), Journal of Asian Economics with Mariyam Haroon (University of Chicago) and Farah Said  (Lahore University of Management Sciences). 
  3. “Are Agricultural Markets in the Punjab Technically Efficient?” (2020), Lahore Journal of Economics  with Naved Hamid (Lahore School of Economics) and Fatima Arshad. 
  4. “The Impact of School Facilities on Drop outs in Pakistan” (2019), CREB Working Paper with Farah Said (Lahore University  of Management Sciences).

 

RESEARCH IN PROGRESS

  • Inspiring Female Micro-Entrepreneurs to Adopt Mobile Money: Evidence from Pakistan with Mansa Saxena (Northwestern University) and Essoyodou Marie Laure Pello Sode (University of Siena)
  • Shared Rides, Cleaner Skies: Reducing Smog via University Carpooling in Lahore with Fatima Jamil (Lahore School of Economics) and Eddy Zou (London School of Economics and Political Science)

 

RESEARCH ASSISTANT ON OTHER PROJECTS  (2014-2016)

  • “Are the poor so present biased?”-Rachel Cassidy (University of Oxford). Tasks included survey design, enumerator training,  monitoring of fieldwork, data cleaning and consolidation. 
  • “Repaying microcredit loans: A natural experiment on liability structure”- Mahreen Mehmood (University of Kent). The task was to collect data from 400 borrowers of the microfinance organisation Akhuwat to find out what reasons caused  them to borrow, their experience with the organisation and whether they would be willing to re-borrow or not. (Summer 2014)

 

RESEARCH GRANTS

  • Lahore School Research Development Fund ($5,000): The role of non-cognitive skills in improving academic 2019 performance (with Farah Said and Maryiam Haroon).
  • PEDL Matchmaking Grants (GBP 5000): Inspiring Female Micro-Entrepreneurs to Adopt Mobile Money: Evidence from Pakistan

 

HONORS AND AWARDS

  • Selected for PEDL Matchmaking Workshop at Oxford University (2025)
  • Graduate Major Merit Scholarship for M.Phil. Program Lahore School of Economics. (2015-2016)