LAHORE: Speakers and researchers at a three-day conference on Applied Development Economics (ADE), which concluded at the Lahore School of Economics (LSE) on Wednesday, said that government policies could produce unintended consequences when weak implementation, behavioural responses and institutional failures were overlooked.
The conference examined how policies and institutions shape economics and social outcomes, with researchers presenting evidence on crime, conflict, governance, digitalisation, women’s employment, climate shocks and behavioural change.
The second day opened with a plenary address by Dr Sheheryar Banuri of the University of East Anglia (UEA), on de-risking policy.
Dr Banuri said policymakers were exposed to the same cognitive and human errors as other people, but mistakes in policy making could have much greater consequences.
He said peer deliberation and expert consultation could reduce policy risks, though they could not eliminate them.
A session on behavioural responses to conflict and crime was chaired by Zunia Saif Tirmazi at LSE and Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Research in Economics and Business (CREB).
Homoyun Abdumavlon of the University of Pittsburgh presented research on national identity and violence during the India-Pakistan cricket rivalry. The study found that India’s defeats against Pakistan were followed by a sharp increase in religious violence in districts with large Muslim populations, unlike defeats against other countries.
Dr Banuri also presented research on whether high-profile crimes deter offending or indicate weak enforcement. His study of the 2018 rape and murder of a seven-year-old girl in Kasur found a large and persistent increase in reported child sexual abuse after the case, particularly in poorly supervised settings. The findings suggested that high-profile crimes could produce “inverse deterrence” by signalling weak institutional enforcement.
Awais Ali of IBA Karachi presented research showing that short-term exposure to terrorism reduced consumer confidence and economic optimism in Pakistan, with stronger effects among older, higher-income and male respondents.
A governance and institutional reforms session was chaired by Dr Waqar Wadho, Associate Prof. and Senior Research Fellow at LSE.
Muhammad Haseeb of the University of Bristol found that delegating regulatory authority increased permit approvals for pollution-intensive firms, while inconsistent implementation enabled senior officials to selectively retain applications and influence firms’ entry patterns.
Farah Said, Executive Director of the Mahbubul Haq Research Centre (MHRC) at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), presented research on QR payments. The study found that financial incentives temporarily increased QR-payment use among Pakistani merchants, but adoption fell after incentives were withdrawn.
Saqib Hussain of the KDI School of Public Policy and Management found that land-record digitisation in Punjab increased agricultural credit, improved corruption detection and land-case resolution, and activated rental markets through greater transparency.
On the third day, Zahra Siddique of the University of Bristol delivered the plenary address on weather shocks, marriage timing and women’s lives in developing countries. The session was chaired by Rabia Ikram of LSE.
Dr Siddique’s research examined how droughts and floods can affect child-marriage decisions depending on marriage-transfer systems. In South Asia, where dowry places a financial burden on the bride’s family, economic hardship may encourage earlier marriage.
Prof Tirmazi found that women were less likely than men to target high-demand occupations when searching for jobs. Providing information about labour demand reduced the initial gender gap but did not increase subsequent applications.
Harmalah Khan of the Centre for Economic Research in Pakistan (CERP) found that removing gender restrictions from job advertisements increased women’s applications to newly-opened positions but also diverted them from jobs already open to them. Voluntary measures encouraging firms to open vacancies to women had a modest positive effect.Hadia Majid of LUMS examined the 1992 removal of gender quotas from medical admissions. The reform increased women’s entry into new medical specialties but also reinforced gender segregation in the profession, with long-term effects on fees, working hours and access to senior and academic positions.
The final session, chaired by Dr Naved Hamid, Director of CREB and Prof. of Economics at LSE, focused on behavioural responses to information and climate.
Dagmara Celik Katreniak of City St George’s, University of London, presented research on feedback, while Zubaria Andlib of the Federal Urdu University of Arts, Science and Technology presented a controlled trial on social media use and youth mental health.
The study found that limiting social media use reduced depression, anxiety and stress while improving self-esteem, well-being and sleep quality.
Sonia Alam of the University of Reading found that agricultural households in Pakistan had increasingly responded to extreme temperatures by increasing off-farm labour. The shift was partly enabled by improvements in local development conditions rather than worsening climate shocks or repeated exposure alone.
Published in Dawn, August 20th, 2026
