Rate My Professor Reshad Ahsan

Reshad Ahsan is an Associate Professor of Economics in the Department of Economics within the Faculty of Business and Economics at the University of Melbourne. He earned his PhD in Economics from Syracuse University. Ahsan's research interests center on the intersection of international trade and development economics, with a particular emphasis on the labor-market effects of trade in developing countries, as well as political economy. His empirical work frequently utilizes data from India and Bangladesh to investigate the impacts of trade liberalization on labor's share of income, unionization rates, intergenerational occupational mobility, the interplay between corruption and regulatory burdens on exports, and the consequences of political violence for exporters.

Ahsan has been with the University of Melbourne since November 2010, advancing from lecturer to associate professor, and served as Director of the PhD Program in Economics from 2022 to 2024. His publications feature prominently in top-tier journals, including the Journal of Development Economics, Journal of International Economics, Economic Inquiry, Canadian Journal of Economics, Review of International Economics, Environmental and Resource Economics, and The Economic Journal. Key works include "Trade Liberalization and Labor’s Slice of the Pie: Evidence from Indian Firms" (with Devashish Mitra, Journal of Development Economics, 2014); "Does Corruption Attenuate the Effect of Red Tape on Exports?" (Economic Inquiry, 2017); "International Trade and Unionization: Evidence from India" (with Arghya Ghosh and Devashish Mitra, Canadian Journal of Economics, 2017); "Trade Liberalization and Intergenerational Occupational Mobility in Urban India" (with Arpita Chatterjee, Journal of International Economics, 2017); "How Does Violence Affect Exporters? Evidence from Political Strikes in Bangladesh" (with Kazi Iqbal, Review of International Economics, 2020); "When it Rains, It Pours: Estimating the Spatial Spillover Effect of Rainfall" (with Farzana Hossain, Environmental and Resource Economics, 2022); and "Atlantic Trade and the Decline of Conflict in Europe" (with Laura Panza and Yong Song, forthcoming in The Economic Journal). Ahsan's scholarship has accumulated over 800 citations on Google Scholar, underscoring its impact in international trade and development economics.