Overview
Rafia Zaman is an interdisciplinary researcher who works on off-grid solar electricity access policies. Her analyses consider market development, institutional governance, local politics, and distributional impacts associated with off-grid investments in low-income contexts. She primarily uses quantitative approaches, drawing from methods used in development economics, spatial statistics, and in engineering sciences. At Duke, she conducts experimental and quasi-experimental research on themes related to energy development and inequality, including economic assessment of electricity access and reliability, evaluation of clean cooking promotion policies, the political economy of energy (safety net programs), and development impacts of technology diffusion/adaptation. Rafia holds a PhD (in Sustainability and Innovation Management) from the University of Graz (FWF – DK Climate Change) in Austria and an MBA from the Asian Institute of Technology in Thailand.