I am a 5th year Econ PhD student at Chicago Booth, and I study (1) human capital investment decisions for teenage girls, and (2) economic informality. I have research sites in India, Pakistan, Uganda, and the Philippines.
I am on the 2025-26 Academic job market. You can email me at emma.zhang@chicagobooth.edu and review my CV here.
Do small businesses avoid the bank? (Joint with Hamna Ahmed and Zunia Tirmazee Saif)
In the field. RCT Registered here! Media coverage here!
Abstract: Increasing the number of Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs) that have formal bank loans is of a primary concern for economic development. We partner with the Small Medium Enterprise Development Authority of Pakistan (SMEDA) to investigate why less than 1% of formally registered SMEs apply for new lines of credit per year. Using variation in loan prices induced by the State Bank of Pakistan, we conduct three field experiments with SME senior management and loan officers to decompose observed aversion to the bank by managerial preferences, managerial search effort, and informal screening by loan officers.
A Pathway to working: Impacts of paid internships on parent-daughter decision making in India (Joint with Rubina Hundal)
In the field. Intervention period complete. RCT registered here!
Abstract: Many girls in India self-report interest in working outside of the home, but parents face social and financial pressure to marry off their daughters if they are not able to find a job or enroll in further education. We investigate parent-child decision making around a daughter’s transition out of high school by cross-randomizing two shocks to a daughter’s perceived income generating ability during high school: (1) a short, 80-hour internship and (2) a 750 INR payment framed as a wage (5% of monthly household income). We randomly inform half of parents that the payment is a “reward” for working, and the other half that the payment is a “gift” selected via lottery. Pilot results find that post high school graduation, girls who were randomly paid for their internship are 161% more likely to have participated in the labor force than those who did an unpaid internship. The effect is driven entirely by parents who received the “reward” framing, suggesting that parents interpret payments as a signal of income generating ability in daughters. Our pilot suggests that paid internships during high school are an effective way of boosting parental encouragement for female labor force participation in lieu of earlier marriage.
Intra-household incentive design: an experiment on parent-daughter decision making dynamics in Pakistan (Joint with Hamna Ahmad, Zunia Tirmazee and Rebecca Wu)
Working paper here! 2-year follow-up complete. Draft update in progress.
Abstract: How should we design and target incentives for skills investment in young adults who live with their parents? We study the role of intra-household payment and information targeting on the effectiveness of a conditional cash transfer (CCT) program using a randomized control trial. The program aims to boost completion of a digital skills training program among young females in urban Pakistan, a population for which low basic digital skills hinder other types of human capital formation. Fixing the incentive size and daughters’ knowledge about it, we cross vary (1) the payment split between parents and daughters and (2) whether parents receive information about the daughters’ incentive. We find that under asymmetric information about the CCT, incentivizing parents leads to a 103% increase in training completion compared to incentivizing daughters, allowing us to reject a unitary household model of decision making. We also find that even after conditioning on parental consent, paying parents decreases the probability that girls lose interest in the program, suggesting that payments to parents may act as commitment device for daughters. Finally, when both parents and daughters know about the CCT, completion rates do not vary by the incentive split, consistent with the efficient collective household model. Our results suggest that in this parent-child context, incomplete information sharing is the main barrier to the optimal incentive targeting, instead of bargaining frictions on the future payment.
Urban Adaptation to Climate Change: Infrastructure, Housing Supply, and Willingness-to-pay for Piped Water (Joint with Ashton Pallottini and Jun Wong)
Household survey in the field. Draft in progress
Abstract: How can cities mitigate the negative impacts of climate change on its residents? In the case of decreasing groundwater, should governments focus on expanding water pipes that do not rely on groundwater, or should they incentivize real-estate developers to offer more units in buildings that are connected to the existing pipes? To answer this question, we investigate the supply and demand for piped water following the 2024 Bangalore water crisis, the city’s worst drought in 50 years. During the drought, households with access to pipes (which draw from the Cauvery river) were relatively unaffected, while households relying on borewells (which draw from groundwater) faced extreme water shortages. Out-patient hospitalizations spike at the beginning of the drought, and in-patient hospitalizations remain at higher levels throughout the water crisis. Hedonic valuations find that residents’ willingness-to-pay to live 100 meters closer to the pipe network permanently increased monthly rents by 0.4%. Long-run housing supply adjusts following the drought– new residential building projects that have access to piped water increase by 25-51%. We complement our analysis with a household survey to uncover residential moving patterns. Finally, we calibrate a structural model to understand whether the number of new units with access to piped water is sufficient for mitigating the negative health risks of rainfall variability, or whether the government should focus efforts on incentivizing real-estate developers to offer more units in buildings that will have access to piped water.
What supports persistent improvements in girls educational outcomes? Evidence from teachers, students, and parents from a curriculum on social action in rural Uganda. (Joint with Vesall Nourani)
Data collection complete. Email for latest version. Previous version submitted as Booth third year paper.
Abstract: We find large, persistent effects of a pedagogical teacher training program that promotes advances in scientific competencies to improve learning outcomes. Utilizing a matched pairs RCT, we find that girls who were enrolled in treatment schools in 2018 are 3pp more likely to be enrolled in school after the covid-lockdowns, and they perform 0.3 standard deviations higher on a standardized assessment relative to girls who are in control schools. Notably, treatment effect sizes were similar across girls and boys. We find treated teachers are more likely to question traditional gender norms, thus pushing them to focus extra effort on girls, who are at baseline lagging the boys. Heterogeneity analysis finds that our results on student-level educational outcomes are significantly amplified for both girls and boys when they interact with gender equitable teachers.
Sibling socialization and the formation of labor force norms in India (Joint with Rubina Hundal) – Pilot complete. Full project funded. RCT Registered here!
Preferences for gains or aversion to losses?: an RCT to boost stock-market participation (Joint with Rubina Hundal) – Pilot results here! Full project funded.
Informal labor and scalable waste-management solutions: evidence from Delhi (Joint with Ashton Pallottini, Yixin Sun and Jun Wong) – Pilot phase. Full project funded. Media coverage is here!
Longer term projects