Profile

Ahsan is an Economics PhD candidate at the University of Sussex working on property taxation, tax administration, and state capacity in Pakistan. His research examines how compliance and enforcement respond to reform design, and how bureaucratic incentives shape implementation outcomes.

Before his PhD, he served as Consulting Lead at the Institute of Development and Economic Alternatives (IDEAS), overseeing the consulting portfolio and leading evidence and learning work with international NGOs and UN partners. As a lead, he designed impact evaluations and mixed-methods research, supervised primary data collection, and supported partners in building survey-based measurement systems for program performance, governance, and service delivery.

Methodologically, he combines administrative data, quasi-experimental designs, surveys, field experiments, and qualitative research to explain not only whether reforms work, but also why, for whom, and under what institutional conditions. In addition to public finance, he is also working on the political economy of bureaucratic institutions, including ongoing research on merit-based recruitment of public school teachers across Pakistan.