Sana Khalil, Ph.D.
About
Degrees
Sana Khalil obtained her doctoral degree in economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in September 2022, where she was a US Fulbright doctoral fellow and received the 2018 Solomon Barkin Award for outstanding dissertation research with a potential to improve the conditions of the working class. Her current research interests lie in applied microeconomics and econometrics, focusing on social and economic inequalities in access to essential economic resources. In her research, she integrates experimental and quasi-experimental techniques with qualitative research methods to explore issues in labor economics, behavioral economics, environmental resource management, and gender and development. Her current research spans three interconnected strands: (1) Labor market inequalities and employers' hiring practices; (2) Cousin marriage, intrahousehold dynamics, and their impact on women's paid work, and (3) Household water insecurities and water resource management.
Websites:
Research Affiliate, Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology (CSDE), UW Seattle: https://csde.washington.edu/affiliates/khalil-sana/
Khalil, S., & Warner, A. (2025). Invisible labor, visible barriers: The socioeconomic realities of women’s work in Pakistan (Preprint). arXiv.
Khalil, S. (2025). Gender and neighborhood penalties in Karachi’s information technology sector. Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics.
Khalil, S. (2024). Unpacking the link between cousin marriage and women’s paid work. Social Science Research, 123, Article 103061.
Khalil, S., Bader Sheikh, S., Jamal, U., & Khan, H. F. (2023). Household water insecurities and willingness to pay in Karachi. Water Policy, 25(12), 1139–1160.
Khalil, S. (2021). Structures of constraint and women’s paid work in Pakistan. Review of Socio-Economic Perspectives, 6(2), pp.11-30.
Khalil, S. (2018). Re-analyzing the gender-specific effects of the Great Recession. In G. A. Epstein (Ed.), The Political Economy of International Finance in an Age of Inequality: Soft Currencies, Hard Landings (pp. 47–67). Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing.
Yang, J., & Khalil, S. (2016). Remedying the problem of the middle-income trap: The case of China. In M. A. Choudhury & U. A. Malik (Eds.), The Social Economy: Poverty Alleviation and Social Well-being (pp. 1–30). Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Yang, J., & Khalil, S. (2015). Do innovation dimensions matter in China’s cross-regional income differences? Journal of Chinese Economic and Business Studies, 13(1), 71–85.
Yang, J., & Khalil, S. (2013). Explaining China’s economic performance from the perspective of non-conventional determinants. Business Review, 8(2), 12.
Khalil, S. (2012). International business environment analysis. Business Review, 7(1), 28–42.