Recent research by NES Professor Sultan Mehmood co-authored with Shaheen Naseer (University of Oxford) and Daniel L. Chen (Toulouse School of Economics) has been published in one of the world's most-cited and prestigious scientific journals Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). PNAS is a peer-reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences. It is considered an authoritative source of high-impact, original research that broadly spans the biological, natural, and social sciences.
The study "Teacher Vaccinations Enhance Student Achievement in Pakistan: The Role of Role Models and Theory of Mind" explores strategies for revitalizing human capital accumulation after a major pandemic. Rather than focusing directly on students, the research emphasizes the pivotal role of teachers — particularly female teachers — in boosting vaccination rates. The study highlights the effectiveness of leveraging female role models to encourage teacher vaccinations. This teacher-centric approach demonstrates the cascading benefits of increased vaccination rates, ultimately improving student achievement. The authors’ experimental findings reveal that leveraging role models significantly increased teacher vaccination rates, driven by empathy as measured by the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET). This intervention reduced teacher absenteeism and improved student performance, demonstrating the transformative potential of social influence and empathy in vaccine acceptance. These results hold broad implications for designing effective vaccination strategies across the Global South, with ripple effects on human capital development and post-pandemic economic recovery.
This publication in PNAS underscores NES’s faculty commitment to producing research that not only contributes to academic discourse but also addresses pressing global policy challenges.
Professor Sultan Mehmood has been working at the New Economic School since 2021. He is also a Research Affiliate at the Harvard Law School. He holds a PhD in Economics from Université Paris Dauphine (France) and is considered an emerging leader in political economy and development economics. He has already published in leading science and economics journals, including Nature, The Economic Journal, and AEJ: Applied.
Read the full paper here.