Research | Ahmed Chaudhry

2025

Do Limits to Campaign Contribution Laws Affect Welfare Policy? Evidence from the US States

Ahmed Chaudhry

R&R, B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, 2025

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How do campaign contribution laws affect welfare policies? The US political system is highly unequal as policy preferences of high-income citizens are often prioritized compared to low-income groups. It is also widely believed that interest groups employ campaign contributions to exercise bargaining power over political candidates. Evidence shows that stricter campaign contribution laws can reduce the bargaining power of interest groups over candidates and increase the say of low-income groups in policy matters. Thus, the effect of stricter contribution laws should also manifest as a shift towards relatively generous welfare policies. This paper analyzes the relationship between stricter campaign contribution laws and welfare policy across the statewide legislative races from 1980 to 2018. The empirical results indicate that stricter contribution laws increase state real minimum wage and EITC rates. The effect of relatively stringent laws on welfare policy generosity is also evident when alternative welfare policy proxies are used.
Does Government Ideology Affect Labor Injuries?

Ahmed Chaudhry, Mustafa Caglayan, and Firat Demir

R&R, Applied Economic Letters, 2025

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Utilizing a comprehensive cross sectional annual panel dataset, spanning 94 countries, we examine the effects of economic ideology of heads of states on fatal and nonfatal workplace injuries. Based on a two-stage least-squares instrumental variables method, our empirical analysis suggests an increase in fatal and nonfatal injury incidence under right wing heads of state and a decrease under left wing heads of state, which are economically relevant.
The Nexus Between Political Ideology and IMF Interventions: A Reciprocal Relationship

Ahmed Chaudhry, and Firat Demir

Under Review, 2025

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In this paper, we examine three questions. First, we explore how a government’s economic ideology, specifically left-wing, centrist, and right-wing partisanship, influences its decision to participate in International Monetary Fund (IMF) programs. Second, we study how partisanship affects the depth and breadth of IMF program conditions. Third, we examine how IMF programs and conditionality requirements influence the likelihood of political parties with left-, right-, or centrist ideologies remaining in or coming to power. Employing an instrumental variable approach, we find that left-wing governments are less likely to enter IMF programs, while the opposite is true for right-wing governments, with no significant effect observed for centrist governments. Furthermore, left-wing governments face fewer conditionality requirements, whereas right-wing governments face more conditions. Lastly, we demonstrate that a higher burden of conditionality requirements reduces the chances of left-wing or centrist parties staying in or gaining office while boosting those of right-wing parties.
Does Flu Vaccination Affect Wages? State-Level Evidence from the US

Pallab Ghosh, Firat Demir, Myongjin Kim, Ahmed Chaudhry, and Junying Zhao

R&R, Applied Economics, 2025

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This paper examines the effects of state-level adult and child seasonal flu vaccination rates on hourly real wages for women. Using an IV method to address possible endogeneity, we find a significantly positive effect of adult vaccination on women’s wages. Furthermore, we show that this effect is stronger for working mothers age groups 16-24 and 25-44, and those with younger children aged 6 months-12 years. We also find that children’s vaccination has a significantly positive effect on mothers’ wages and that this effect is stronger for women with younger children. The results also show that the positive effect is particularly larger for non-college educated women, aged 16-44 with at least one child. These effects are also stronger for mothers with younger children.
Who Rules the World? The Myth of Multipolarity and The Real Drivers of Leadership in International Organizations

Ahmed Chaudhry, Firat Demir, Omar S. Dahi, Ricardo S. Diaz, Van Jackson, and 1 more author

Under Review, 2025

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The growing prominence of the global South in trade, finance, and politics has been widely viewed as a structural shift in the global power balance, particularly with the rise of BRICS countries, led by China. This paper challenges such narratives by empirically examining leadership representation in international organizations (IOs). Using a novel dataset covering 186 IOs and over 5,000 leader-year observations from 1997 to 2022, we analyze the determinants of country representation in IO leadership positions. Contrary to expectations, we find that traditional indicators of power, such as GDP size or income levels, do not significantly influence leadership shares. Instead, global trade and FDI shares emerge as key determinants. Strikingly, a country’s representation is overwhelmingly influenced by path dependency, with previous leaders’ nationalities predicting future representation with up to 94% accuracy. Additionally, we explore variations across multilateral, transnational, and civil society IOs, finding the strongest path dependency to be in civil society organizations, which is surprising as these are often understood to be the most fluid and least state-based among IOs. Our findings debunk the myth of multipolarity and reveal that compared to the North, Emerging and other Global South nations are underrepresented in IO leadership even after controlling for the size of their economies and other covariates. This research highlights the importance of leadership in understanding global governance and calls for a nuanced interpretation of power beyond conventional economic or military metrics.
A De Facto Policy-Based Measure of Political Ideology

Ahmed Chaudhry

Work in Progress, 2025

2024

The Effects of Political Ideology on Export Diversification and Productive Capabilities

Ahmed Chaudhry, and Firat Demir

Working Paper, 2024

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This article studies the effect of left-wing, right-wing, and centrist economic ideologies on export sophistication and productive capabilities across countries. Productive capabilities and export sophistication reflect the ability of an economy to produce and export a wide variety of sophisticated products and are shown to be strong determinants of long-run economic development and growth. The governing political party’s ideology plays a crucial role in shaping a nation’s economic policies, which ultimately impacts its productive capabilities and long-run economic development. Based on the two-stage least-squares instrumental variables method, our empirical analysis suggests a significantly negative effect of right-wing governments and a significantly positive effect for centrist governments on the productive capabilities of a country. We do not find any effect of left-wing governments. These results are robust to a rich battery of sensitivity tests.
Effects of CDC Recommendation on HPV Vaccine Uptake 2010 – 2015

Pallab Ghosh, Ahmed Chaudhry, Firat Demir, Myongjin Kim, Junying Zhao, and 1 more author

Frontiers in Public Health, 2024

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This study evaluates the impact of US CDC’s HPV vaccine recommendations on male adults and children. This study uses the 2010-2015 US National Health Interview Survey to evaluate the before-after policy change effect of HPV recommendation on an individual’s probability of HPV vaccination. Dummy regression analyses with fixed effects show that HPV vaccine policy is significantly associated with a 14.7% increase in the likelihood of HPV vaccination for men aged 11-21. HPV vaccine recommendations are also associated with modest spillover effects, i.e., a 5.6% increased likelihood for men aged 22-25 and marginally for men aged 26-60. African American men and men with poor health are 2.7% and 15.4% less likely to uptake HPV vaccines than white men and men with good or fair health, respectively. Findings offer comprehensive evidence of the effectiveness and spillover effects of this type of federal-level policy, provide policy lessons for other vaccines, and identify vulnerable subpopulations as targets for future interventions.
Effect of Campaign Contribution Laws on State-Level Economic Development Incentives

Ahmed Chaudhry

Work in Progress, 2024
Covid-19 and Food Insecurity in Pakistan

Ahmed Chaudhry, and Ahmed El-Fatamoui

Work in Progress, 2024

2019

Political competition and economic policy: empirical evidence from Pakistan

Ahmed Chaudhry, and Ummad Mazhar

Economics, 2019

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The influence of politics on economic policy is not fully understood. The challenge to ensure political inclusiveness and economic prosperity remains. Perhaps, one way to attain this objective is by increasing political competition. This paper gathers empirical evidence from Pakistan, a country with a checkered political history characterized by episodes of representative, non-representative, and indirectly elected governments. In recent years, the country has witnessed a gradual strengthening of democratic rules with economic progress. Focusing on nine elections held over 1970 to 2015 the authors measure political competition and estimate its impact on economic policy. Contrary to popular conceptions about Pakistan’s economy, they find a positive association between lack of political competition and poor economic policy. This finding holds at national as well as subnational levels in Pakistan and withstands a number of robustness tests.