Posts

Asad Islam’s Major Research and Publications

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Genetic distance, immigrants’ identity, and labor market outcomes The relationship between immigrants’ ethnic identity and their labor market performance is a subject of strong policy and academic debate. While numerous empirical studies indicate that culture and identity shape labor market outcomes, causal interpretations remain elusive due to endogeneity: labor market performance and identity attitudes are often mutually influential. In this study, Asadul Islam and Paul A. Raschky propose an innovative solution: using genetic distance between an immigrant’s home and host country as an instrumental variable for ethnic identity, thereby isolating the exogenous component that captures deep-rooted cultural differences. Methodology The study utilizes data from Canada’s Equality, Security, and Community (ESC) Survey, rich in variables related to immigrant identity, ancestry, labor market performance, and demographic controls. Immigrants’ identity is measured both as the stated importance o...
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What Determines Residential Electricity Demand in Urban Bangladesh? New Evidence from Panel Data- a study by Asad Islam

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Designing efficient and equitable electricity pricing is a perennial challenge in developing countries experiencing rapid urbanization. Bangladesh, with its swift economic growth and urban expansion, faces a persistent gap between electricity demand and supply. This blog post draws upon the rigorous study by Hemawathy Balarama, Asad Islam, Jun Sung Kim, and Liang Choon Wang, which leverages household panel data and an exogenous value-added-tax (VAT) shock to estimate short-run price elasticities of residential electricity demand in Bangladesh’s urban centers. Data and Identification Strategy The authors’ dataset comprises three rounds of surveys from households in Dhaka, Jessore, and Khulna—large urban districts with similar climate regimes. The research exploits an exogenous VAT-induced change in electricity prices during the survey period, enabling a robust identification strategy through fixed-effect instrumental variable (FE-IV) estimation. This method isolates causal effects, addr...
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Following Asad Islam: What Bangladeshi Sex Workers Teach Us About Beauty, Risk, and Economics

In “The Economic Returns to Good Looks and Risky Sex in the Bangladesh Commercial Sex Market,” Asad Islam investigates how physical attractiveness and risky sexual behaviors affect sex workers’ earnings. His findings are eye-opening: while attractive sex workers do earn a premium for their looks, this premium is on par with women’s returns to beauty in non-sexual occupations. The ‘beauty premium’ is not unique to sex work, but a broader social reality that affects women in many labor markets. Perhaps more striking is the finding that engaging in unsafe (unprotected) sex, despite inherent dangers such as HIV/STDs, yields even higher earnings—especially for attractive workers. This suggests that in the high-stakes world of commercial sex, beauty and risk can jointly heighten bargaining positions and incomes, albeit at tremendous personal cost. Islam’s work is methodologically rigorous, controlling for social, demographic, and labor variables. He shows that factors such as education, expe...
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Surgical Preparedness Index: Validating Global Capacity for Elective Surgery Resilience; Research by Asad Islam

The global need for resilient elective surgery systems was cast into sharp relief during the COVID-19 pandemic, which disrupted planned surgical care worldwide. Responding to this challenge, an international research consortium developed and validated the Surgical Preparedness Index (SPI)—an objective, multidomain metric to assess hospital-level readiness to maintain elective surgical services during systemic shocks. Methods and Measurement The genesis of the SPI involved expert consensus and pilot studies in 1632 hospitals drawn from 119 countries. Using a rigorous development framework, an initial list of 103 readiness indicators was systematically reduced to 23 validated metrics, grouped into five domains: facilities, consumables, staff, prioritization, and management systems. Each indicator was precisely defined and globally applicable, supporting robust benchmarking and cross-country comparison. SPI scores were then correlated against hospital elective surgical volume recovery pos...
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Microcredit in Bangladesh: Evaluating Differential Welfare Impacts Across Households; Authored by Asad Islam (Monash University)

  Microcredit has transformed financial access for the poor and has been integrated into development strategies across the Global South. Yet, the aggregate benefits and their distribution among targeted households remain contested. This post synthesizes robust empirical research examining the heterogeneous effects of microcredit program participation on food consumption among Bangladeshi households, using comprehensive village- and household-level data and rigorous causal inference. Data and Empirical Approach The study leverages a nationally representative sample encompassing 3,026 households from 91 villages and employs both village fixed effects and instrumental variable methods to establish unbiased program effects. A land-based eligibility rule interacts with predetermined household characteristics to instrument real program participation. Consumption expenditure—where food accounts for over 70% of total spending for the poor—is the focal welfare measure. Notably, the methodol...
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