Shaheen Naseer

I am an
applied micro-economist with research at the intersection of development economics, political
economy and organizational economics.
My research focuses on the internal labour markets of the state and the human capital formation
of personnel, particularly elite bureaucrats.Department of Economics
Manor Road Building, Manor Road
Oxford, OX1 3UQ
Dear Members of the Search Committee,
I am writing to express my strong interest in the faculty position in your department. I am an
applied micro-economist with research at the intersection of development economics, political
economy and organizational economics.
My research focuses on the internal labour markets of the state and the human capital formation
of personnel, particularly elite bureaucrats.
My job market paper, “Assignment Matters: Early Exposure and Career Outcomes” examines
how early-career rotation affects the development of leadership within the civil service. I
digitized administrative personnel records for 35 cohorts (1986–2020) in Pakistan’s elite
administrative service. Identification comes from a gender policy that created exogenous
variation in the initial five-year rotation span. I find that officers with wider rotation, proxied
by non-domicile rotation, are significantly more likely to hold leadership roles in mid-career.
I show that serving in more distinct cultural, socio-economic, and political environments builds
balanced skills (general managerial skills rather than specialization in one domain) and
increases the likelihood of selection into coordination-intensive roles in the civil services.
My job market paper advances the state-bureaucracy literature by shifting the focus to younger
officers and opening the internal labour market’s assignment black box. Using complete early
career posting histories, I identify the precise margin on which wider rotations matter the most.
Beyond my job market project, I have collaborative work on state capacity, trainings, evidence
use in policymaking, and bureaucratic performance. My publications include American
Economic Journal: Economic Policy (2025), Journal of Development Economics (2024),
and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2024), with a revise-and-resubmit at
Journal of Development Economics.
In my academic portfolio, I have several ongoing projects with collaborators including Ray
Fisman (Boston University), Silvia Vannutelli (Northwestern University), Imran Rasul
(University College London), Shachar Kariv (University of California, Berkeley), Sultan
Mehmood (New Economic School), and Daniel Chen (Toulouse School of Economics). I
would look forward to expanding this collaborative network further within your department.
To facilitate my research, I secured a formal data-sharing agreement with Pakistan’s
Establishment Division, the government’s human recourse division. I have also conducted
several small-scale RCTs in federal training settings, including the Civil Services Academy
(CSA), the National School of Public Policy (NSPP). This access underpins two ongoing
observational studies using digitized, harmonized, large-scale personnel data. Together, these
projects demonstrate my ability to negotiate complex partnerships with policymakers while
advancing rigorous, policy-relevant research.