Dr. Ali Cheema is a Professor of Economics at LUMS whose research focuses on economic development with an emphasis on human capital, inclusion and social mobility, gender dynamics, decentralisation and political economy.
Associated with LUMS since 1999, he has served as Director of the Mahbub Ul Haq Research Centre, and Chair of the Economics Department.
His research, published in leading journals including the Journal of Political Economy, the American Political Science Review, Science, and Nature Medicine, examines how institutions, politics, and social norms shape development and political outcomes and has received international recognition, including the American Political Science Association’s Luebbert Best Article Honourable Mention Award.
Dr. Cheema served as a member of the Board of Trustees of the Institute of Development Studies, Sussex, and was a founding member of the Stockholm Challenge Award-winning portal, Relief Information System for Earthquakes, Pakistan.
He is a co-founder of the Centre for Economic Research in Pakistan (CERP), a Senior Research Fellow at IDEAS Pakistan, a research affiliate and co-lead academic of the LSE-Oxford based International Growth Centre’s (IGC) Pakistan programme, and an Affiliated Professor at the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) at MIT. He also serves on the Board of Directors of the State Bank of Pakistan and has served as a member of Pakistan's National Finance Commission and the Punjab Finance Commission.
Dr. Cheema holds a PhD in Economics from Cambridge, an MPhil in Economics and Politics from Cambridge, and a BA (Hons.) in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics from Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. He was also a visiting Fulbright and South Asia Institute (SAI) Scholar at Harvard Kennedy School in 2010-11.
Blair, G., Weinstein, J. M., Christia, F., Arias, E., Badran, E., Blair, R. A., ... & Wilke, A. M. (2021). Community policing does not build citizen trust in police or reduce crime in the Global South.?Science,374(6571), eabd3446.
Arce, J. S. S., Warren, S. S., Meriggi, N. F., Scacco, A., McMurry, N., Voors, M., ... & Mobarak, A. M. (2021). COVID-19 vaccine acceptance and hesitancy in low and middle income countries, and implications for messaging. medRxiv.
Cheema, A., Khan, S., Liaqat, A., & Mohmand, S. K. (2023). Canvassing the gatekeepers: A field experiment to increase women voters turnout in Pakistan.?American Political Science Review, 117(1), 1-21.
Acemoglu, D., Cheema, A., Khwaja, A. I., & Robinson, J. A. (2020). "Trust in state and nonstate actors: Evidence from dispute resolution in Pakistan". Journal of Political Economy, 128(8).
Hartman, A. C., Khan, S., Lake, M., Karim, S., Cheema, A., Liaqat, A., & Mohmand, S. K. (2022). Field Experiments on Gender: Where the Personal and Political Collide.?PS: Political Science & Politics, 1-5.