Zaman, Rafia

Rafia studies how households, farmers, firms, and communities adapt to resource constraints and environmental pressures such as unreliable electricity, shifting irrigation patterns, and drought shocks.

Her research combines field experiments, non-market valuation, econometric analysis, and spatial methods to examine how preferences, beliefs, and governance arrangements shape behavior, technology adoption, and resilience outcomes. 

In West Africa, she analyzes willingness to pay for reliable electricity access in Sierra Leone; in South Asia, she leads studies on irrigation governance in Bangladesh using behavioral games, valuation surveys, and institutional comparisons.

Grounded in energy access and groundwater irrigation, her work extends to broader climate adaptation and displaced community contexts, focusing on how policy design, institutional rules, and social norms affect long-term development resilience.