Dr. Ali Hasanain is an Associate Professor at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS). He served as the Head of Department from 2019 to 2022. Dr. Hasanain’s research focuses primarily on how public service delivery can be improved through reform initiatives, particularly through technological progress and improvements in the media. He also studies how information and communication technologies (ICT) can improve market functioning. Dr. Hasanain’s research has been featured in The Guardian, Economist, Huffington Post, various World Bank blogs, VoxEU, VoxDev, Herald, Friday Times, Dawn, and other media outlets, as well as been the topic of the feature story of the World Bank’s global website. He is a member of Evidence in Governance and Politics (EGAP), a Senior Research Fellow at the Mahbub ul Haq Research Center, a member of the research board of PRIME Institute, a Fellow of the Consortium of Development Policy Research (CDPR), and a faculty advisor at the Technology for People Initiative (TPI). From 2014 to 2016, he was a Global Leaders Fellow at Oxford and Princeton universities.
Dr. Hasanain previously directed the LUMS engagement on the World Bank's Pakistan At One Hundred Initiative, which sought to support greater debate and study Pakistan's medium term future, out to the year 2047. He has also previously been a member of the Punjab Government's Economic Advisory Committee. With his colleagues, Dr. Hasanain designed and implemented an ICT-based monitoring pilot in partnership with the provincial government of Punjab in 2011. The government adopted the intervention and scaled it up province-wide, and it is still in daily use. He also served as South Asia Team Leader for a Global Development Network (GDN) policy research project during 2011-2012.
At LUMS, he teaches courses on the economics of the media, corruption, markets, and the law. He is also the Pakistan country coordinator (and one-time participant) of the South Asian Economics Students Meet.
Dr. Hasanain received his PhD from George Mason University in 2010.
Callen, M., Gulzar, S., Hasanain, A., Khan, A. R., Khan, Y., & Mehmood, M. Z. (2013). Improving Public Health Delivery in Punjab, Pakistan: Issues and Opportunities. Lahore Journal of Economics, 18(Special Edition), 249-269.
Batrancea, L., Nichita, A., Olsen, J., Kogler, C., Kirchler, E., Hoelzl, E., ... & Schaffner, M. (2019). Trust and power as determinants of tax compliance across 44 nations. Journal of Economic Psychology, 2019.
Leonardo Bursztyn, Michael Callen, Bruno Ferman, Saad Gulzar, Ali Hasanain, Noam Yuchtman, Political Identity: Experimental Evidence on Anti-Americanism in Pakistan, Journal of the European Economic Association, Volume 18, Issue 5, October 2020, Pages 2532-2560
Hasanain, A., Ahmad, S., Mehmood, M. Z., Majeed, S., & Zinabou, G. (2012). Irrigation and water use efficiency in South Asia. Policy Research Paper: Supporting Policy Research to Inform Agricultural Policy in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. New Delhi.
Hasanain, A., Rezaee, A., & Khan, Y. (2016) Improving quality information in the unpackaged milk market in Lahore, Pakistan. Private Enterprise Development in Low-Income Countries (Final Funding Report).
Hasanain, A. (2016) Governing through the phone: How policy-makers can leverage ICT to improve governance outcomes. Global Economic Governance Programme Policy Brief, Oxford University.
Punjab Planning & Development Department. (2015). Punjab Growth Strategy 2018: Accelerating Economic Growth and Improving Social Outcomes. Retrieved from http:// https://www.theigc.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Punjab-Growth-Strategy-2018-Full-report.pdf (Note: I contributed only to the Agriculture, Livestock, and Health Chapters)
"Misconceptions about Conception" Empirical Studies of Conflict, ICT, and Governance. Princeton, NJ. September 2016.
"Milk, Urea or White Paint? Improving quality information in the milk market in Lahore, Pakistan" PEDL Workshop, Warwick and London, UK. December 2014.
"Panel on Bureaucrats Personalities" Global Leaders Workshop, Oxford, UK. October, 2014.
"EGAP Metaketa Harmonization Workshop". UCLA. Los Angeles. June, 2017
"Personalities and Bureaucrats" IGC Growth Week Presentation, September, 2014
"Irrigation in South Asia" Global Development Network. Colombo, Sri Lanka. September, 2012.
"Corruption." Pakistan At One Hundred Thematic Area Conference. LUMS. Lahore. March 2018.
"Irrigation in South Asia" Global Development Network. Paris, France. February, 2012.
Callen, M., Gulzar, S., Hasanain, A., Khan, M.Y. & Rezaee, A. Data and Policy Decisions: Experimental Evidence from Pakistan. Revision requested at the Journal of Development Economics This paper combines two papers previously circulated as: Callen, M., Gulzar, S., Hasanain, A., Khan, Y., & Rezaee, A. (2015). Personalities and public sector performance: Evidence from a health experiment in Pakistan (No. w21180). National Bureau of Economic Research. & Callen, M., Gulzar, S., Hasanain, S.A., & Khan, Y. (2016). The Political Economy of Public Sector Absence: Experimental Evidence from Pakistan (No. w22340). National Bureau of Economic Research.
Hasanain, A., Rezaee, A., & Khan, Y. No bulls: Asymmetric information in the market for artificial insemination in Pakistan. (Oxford Global Economic Governance Programme WP 2016/123) Under submission at the Journal of the European Economic Association
Cheema, A., Hasanain, A., & Shapiro, J. N. Community Policing: Pakistan. In preparation, 60% complete. Expecting to submit August 2020.
Hasanain, A., & Shah, S. A. A. (2012). Investigating the Proposed Changes to Pakistan s Corporate Bankruptcy Code. CREB Working Paper Series (No. 01-12).
Hasanain, A. (2019). Leveraging Identification for Service Delivery: the possibilities of targeted subsidies in Pakistan. Center for Global Development (Mimeo).
Blair, G., Christia, F., Samii, C., Weinstein, J., Arias, E., Badran, E., Blair, R.A., Cheema, A., Getzer, T., Grossman, G., Haim, D., Hanson, R., Hasanain, A., Kachero, B., Kronick, D., Morse, B., Muggah, R., Nanes, M., Ravanilla, N., Shapiro, J. N., Silva, B., Souza, P.C.L., Tsai, L & Hyde, S. Community Policing Metaketa Project. In preparation, 75% complete. Expecting to submit January 2020
Hasanain, A., Usman, H. & Zafar, F. Using Automated Event Detection to Reduce Data Collection Costs with an Application to the BFRS Dataset. In preparation, 70% complete. Expecting to submit January 2020
Hasanain, A. (2016) Small-scale technologies and development: Removing hurdles to realizing potential. Oxford-Princeton Global Leaders Fellow Programme (Mimeo).
Callen, M., & Hasanain, A. (2011). The Punjab Model of Proactive Governance: Empowering Citizens through Information Communication Technology; Findings from an Early Review of Evidence. World Bank (Mimeo).