Sultan Mehmood

Sultan Mehmood is an Assistant Professor of Economics (tenure-track) at the New Economic School of Moscow, where he joined in January 2021. He is also a Research Fellow at Harvard Law School's Program in Islamic Law, the Centre for Economic Research in Pakistan (CERP), and the Pakistan Institute of Development Studies (PIDE).

His educational background includes a Ph.D. in Economics from France (2019), with prior studies in the Netherlands, Italy, and Pakistan. Before academia, he served as a policy advisor at the CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.

Mehmood's research focuses on Development Economics, Political Economy, and Law and Economics. His pioneering work examines judicial reforms in the Global South, particularly in Pakistan, using large datasets and legal theory to explore the relationship between judicial independence and development. His research methodology combines natural and field experiments to investigate how law, politics, and institutions shape economic development.

His publications span prestigious journals including Nature, American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, The Economic Journal, Journal of Development Economics, and PNAS. His work shows consistent thematic focus on judicial independence, religious influences on legal systems, and development economics in Pakistan.

• IOEA Best Paper Award: The impact of Presidential appointment of judges: Montesquieu or the Federalists?
• AEA Best Paper Award: Ink and Ire: Revolutionary Impact of Russian Literature (with V. Avetian)

Mehmood has advised on significant projects including the acquisition and digitization of Pakistani judicial decisions dating back to 1947, contributing to an online resource database for judicial decisions that incorporates AI-related training tools. His teaching experience includes Statistical Reasoning and Causal Inference, Empirical Political Economics, and Introduction to Law and Economics at various institutions.

He leads multiple research projects including studies on judicial independence, religious leaders' impact on rule of law, and experimental investigations of Ramadan fasting's effect on judicial leniency. His work bridges economics, law, and political science through rigorous empirical analysis of institutional development in the Global South.