Fatiq Nadeem

Welcome! I am an environmental economist at UC Santa Barbara’s Bren School of Environmental Science and Management. I am on the 2026–27 job market.

I study environmental regulation in the Global South, with a focus on fires and air pollution. I use tools from applied microeconomics, causal inference, and remote sensing to: (i) examine how non-state institutions can enforce environmental rules where the state cannot; (ii) build satellite measurement systems that detect fires and air pollution at high resolution; and (iii) test which policy instruments change behavior, partnering with governments to turn evidence into action.

I carry out most of my research in partnership with local governments and non-governmental institutions in Pakistan, India, Indonesia, and Bolivia. My work has been published in The Economic Journal, Science, and Energy Policy, and has received competitive funding from the World Bank, the International Growth Centre, the Schmidt Family Foundation, and J-PAL.

Previously, I was a Robert S. McNamara Research Fellow in the World Bank’s Development Research Group and a Predoctoral Fellow at Evidence in Governance and Politics (EGAP), UCLA. I hold a BSc (Honors) in Economics from the Lahore University of Management Sciences, Pakistan.