Maha Rehman

My research studies economic adjustment when incentives, measurement, and capacity operate imperfectly. I focus on settings where frictions mediate the translation of formal incentives into economic response, and where short-run responses can shape longer-run patterns of response, delivery, and adjustment.

The common thread across my projects is that economic responses are mediated by institutional constraints. Incentives may exist formally but operate imperfectly in practice; capacity may fail to reach the margin where it is most productive; and adjustment may generate persistent inefficiencies rather than immediate recovery.

I examine these mechanisms across several settings: how temporary visibility changes collective response, how capacity is converted into realised delivery, how gaps between actual and recorded consumption generate service losses, and how production units reorganise when losses are imperfectly smoothed.

I combine field experiments, quasi-experimental variation, and large-scale administrative data to study these mechanisms in developing economies.