Manisha Shah

Manisha Shah is a Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, specializing in development economics with research interests spanning applied microeconomics, global health, and international development. She received her PhD from UC Berkeley and has established herself as a leading researcher in the economics of sex markets, child health and education, and sanitation policy.

Her research focuses on understanding how economic policies and interventions can improve health outcomes, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. Shah has conducted extensive field work in Tanzania, Indonesia, India, Ecuador, and Mexico, examining issues ranging from HIV/AIDS prevention to the impacts of public works programs on human capital development.

Shah's work demonstrates significant heterogeneity in policy impacts across different contexts and populations. Her research on life skills programming for adolescent girls showed varying mental health impacts across Tanzania, Bangladesh, and Ethiopia, while her work on sanitation interventions revealed threshold effects where health benefits materialized once village sanitation coverage reached 50-75%. She has also demonstrated how criminalization of sex work can increase sexually transmitted infections among sex workers by 58% due to decreased condom access and use.

As an editor at the Journal of Health Economics and an Associate Editor at The Review of Economics and Statistics, Shah plays a significant role in shaping scholarly discourse in her fields of expertise. Her research has been supported by major organizations including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the World Bank, and the National Science Foundation.

Shah has received recognition for her methodological rigor, frequently employing randomized controlled trials and natural experiments to identify causal relationships. Her work often reveals unintended consequences of well-intentioned policies, such as how lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic increased domestic violence while decreasing sexual assaults in public spaces, or how public works programs can decrease school enrollment among adolescents in certain contexts.