Research Expertise and Interest

applied microeconomics, international development, global health, gender

Research Description

Manisha Shah is an applied microeconomist with a particular interest in health, education, and gender in low- and middle-income countries. The overarching goal of her research agenda is to identify policies and interventions to improve the lives of the global poor.

She has written several foundational papers on the economics of sex markets to learn how more effective policies and programs can be deployed to slow the spread of HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs).  She also studies the impacts of policies to increase child and adolescent human capital investment in low-income settings.  Her research often involves primary data collection, and she has conducted field research in Tanzania, Uganda, Mexico, Ecuador, Brazil, Indonesia, and India.  Shah has been supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the World Bank, and the National Science Foundation among others.

Professor Shah has research appointments at NBER, BREAD, IZA, J-PAL, and CEGA.  She has won teaching and research awards and currently serves as an editor at Journal of Health Economics and an associate editor at The Review of Economics and Statistics. Prior to joining Goldman, Shah was the inaugural recipient of the Franklin D. Gilliam, Jr. Chair in Social Justice at UCLA and founding director of the Global Lab for Research in Action. She earned her Ph.D. from UC Berkeley in 2006 and an MSc from the London School of Economics in 1997.