Inayat Ullah

Building: S3H,Office 105 (AFB) National University of Sciences & Technology (NUST) Sector H-12, Islamabad, Pakistan

Welcome to my personal website! I am currently based in Islamabad where I work as an Assistant Professor at the Dept. of Government and Public Policy, National University of Sciences & Technology (NUST). Earlier, I worked as an ISEF Research Fellow at the Environmental Planning Research Institute (EPI), Seoul National University (SNU), South Korea. I hold Ph.D in Public Policy from the Korea Development Institute (KDI), School of Public Policy and Management specializing in impact evaluation of interventions for sustainable development outcomes in developing countries. I primarily work with impact evaluation methods in experimental and quasi-experimental settings that help policy analysts assess the effectiveness of government policies in an unbiased way. For my JMP, we find ideal conditions for a natural experiment that allowed us to establish a causal relationship between a technology-based externally controlled schools’ monitoring program and improvements in learning outcomes in the KP province, Pakistan. We apply various techniques, including difference-in-differences, event study, and instrumental variables to causally attribute effects to the program. Recently, the working paper of this research has received the Innovative Policy Best Paper Award from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the International Economic Association (IEA) for the year 2023. This prestigious award, with a prize of $7,000, was formally presented during the ADB-IEA award session at the 2023 ADB Annual Meeting on May 5th, 2023 (the announcement is available at Winners of the 2023 ADB–IEA Innovative Policy Research Award.

As a researcher, I seek to scientifically answer three important questions:

Whether changes in the well-being of individuals and groups are genuinely attributed to a particular project, program, or policy?
What type of program or policy do governments need to enhance the human capital in a sustainable way?
How to make best use of scientific knowledge for existing societies and generations to come?

CV as PDF

selected papers

GOV

Impact of early access to land record information through digitization: Evidence from Alternate Dispute Resolution Data in Punjab, Pakistan

Ullah Inayat, Hussain Saqib.

Land Use Policy 2023

Abstract URL

We leverage novel data extracted from weekly updated registers of Alternate Dispute Resolution (ADR) centres to examine the impact of early access to land record information through digitization on dispute resolution outcomes in the Punjab province of Pakistan. Employing a quasi-experimental design, we estimate the causal effect of early access to Punjab Land Record Management Information System (PLRMIS) on the registration and resolution process of land-related disputes. Our results reveal that ADR centres in districts with early treatment experience an average increase of approximately 50 cases compared to those in districts with late treatment. By utilizing generalized multi-level mixed effect and two-stage least square models, we find that early implementation of PLRMIS significantly increases successful mediation outcomes by 126 cases in the treatment region with no effect on mediation failure cases. These findings provide compelling evidence for the pivotal role of PLRMIS in facilitating effective alternate dispute resolution, indicating increased public utilization of the system. Our results underscore the effectiveness of digitization and e-governance systems in improving land administration, reducing information asymmetry, and expediting the dispute resolution process.
EDU

Does Technology-based Teachers’ Monitoring Increase Learning Outcomes? Evidence from Public Schools in Pakistan

Booyuel Kim, Inayat Ullah, Yang Hee-seung.

ADB-IEA Research Award 2023

Abstract URL

We examine the effect of a technology-based monitoring of public schools on teachers’attendance and learning outcomes. Our identification is based on a large-scale monitoring program implemented in over 28,000 primary and secondary public schools in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province, Pakistan. We find ideal conditions for a natural experiment and apply difference-in-difference, event study and instrumental variable approaches to causally attribute changes in the learning outcomes of enrolled children to the monitoring program. We utilize seven rounds of a nationally representative annually conducted independent and systematically random survey called ASER-Pakistan. Our findings suggest that technology-based monitoring has increased teachers’ attendance by nearly 8 percentage points in the first year after the program. Despite a slight decrease in the second year after the intervention, the long-run effect of the program strongly persists with significant impact on learning outcomes of enrolled children. We find that enrolled children’s standardized Reading, Math and English test score in the monitored schools has improved significantly by 0.08, 0.09 and 0.10 standard deviations points respectively at the lower (0 5) grades. Using exogenous program effect (obtained through diff-in-diff) as an instrument, we use observed variation in teachers’ attendance to predict changes in the standardized test score of children. The 2SLS results are strikingly (nearly two-times) larger than fixed-effect OLS estimates. More specifically, on average, standardized Reading, Math and English test score in the monitored region has improved significantly by .33, .22 and .62 SD points respectively at the lower (0 5) grades. We also utilize the post-merger (of two regions) data to test the difference in observed outcomes when the monitoring program was extended to the comparison region. We also examine the program’s effect on enrollment and school participation. Our results are robust on a number of alternate specifications, sub-samples, and falsification tests.