Professor Adeel Malik

Professor Adeel Malik joined LMH as a Senior Research Fellow in 2023. 

Professor Malik holds a DPhil in Economics from the University of Oxford, which he completed in 2004 as a Rhodes Scholar.

Professor Malik’s research focuses on the political economy of development with a regional focus on Middle East and Pakistan. He uses an empirically rigorous, historically informed, and policy-relevant approach to addressing the big questions in political economy. Professor Malik’s research combines rigorous empirical methods with hand-collected data on firms, political families, and religious institutions. An emerging strand of his research seeks to enhance our understanding the political economy of authoritarian rule in Muslim societies. In this regard, he is currently researching on the politics of trade liberalization in Muslim societies, the impact of political dynasties on economic development, the interplay between religion, land, and politics in Pakistan, and the impact of exceptional institutional arrangements in frontier regions on conflict.

His research articles have been published in reputed academic journals, such as the Journal of European Economic Association, European Journal of Political Economy, Journal of Development Economics, Oxford Economic Papers, World Development, and Review of International Political Economy.

Alongside his role as Senior Research Fellow at LMH, Professor Malik is Globe Fellow in the Economies of Muslim Societies at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies and Associate Professor of development economics at the Oxford Department of International Development. Professor Malik is also the co-founder and Academic Lead of the Oxford Pakistan Programme, which provides scholarships to talented students from Pakistan to read for graduate degrees at LMH. He is also a Senior Associate of the Cairo-based Economic Research Forum, Senior Fellow of the Policy Initiative in Beirut, and Research Fellow of CERP in Lahore.

Professor Malik's research interests include:

• Political economy of development in Muslim Societies
• Political economy of authoritarianism
• The politics of trade and financial development

Crony Capitalism in the Middle East: Business and Politics from Liberalization to the Arab Spring (edited with Ishac Diwan and Izak Atiyas), 2019, Oxford University Press.

‘Pre-colonial religious institutions and development: Evidence through a military coup’ (with R. Mirza), 2022, Journal of the European Economic Association, April Issue. Open Access.

"The Predicament of Establishing Persistence: Slavery and Human Capital in Africa" (with V. Bouaroudj), Journal of Historical Political Economy, Vol 1, No. 3, pp 411-446.

‘Politics of trade protection in an autocracy: Evidence from an EU tariff liberalization in Morocco’ (with C. Ruckteschler and F. Eibl), 2021, European Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 71, January 2022.

‘Devolution under autocracy: Evidence from Pakistan’ (with R. Mirza and J-P. Platteau), 2023, In Faguet, J-P and Pal Sarmista (eds) Decentralized Governance: Crafting Effective Democracies Around the World, London: LSE Press. Open Access. 

‘Frontier Rule and Conflict’ (with R. Mirza and F. Rehman), 2023, UNU-WIDER Working Paper. Helsinki.