Exploring Trust in Pakistan’s Financial Institutions
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2024-06-19
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Abstract
The existing literature on Pakistan's financial institutions, especially the banking sector, primarily focuses on comparative performance, overlooking the essential question of how banks gained acceptance in a society where they are labeled non-compliant with Islamic principles. This paper fills this gap by using existing literature and performing an ordered logit regression on survey data. It shows that despite religious challenges, banks gained trust through performance, job creation, and ongoing Islamization since 2002. The paper concludes that the banking sector's successful, subtle integration into a conservative society can be used as a model to liberalize other institutions without causing rifts with religion.
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Scholars@Duke
Fasih Zulfiqar
I'm an M.A. student in Analytical Political Economy (GPA: 3.95) at Duke, where I am also collaborating with Professor Timur Kuran, coauthoring several papers and working on a public opinion project. My research explores the political economy of beliefs and institutional traps, combining applied microeconomics theory with empirical political economy to explain why Pareto-inefficient equilibria persist.
My primary research strand formalizes the concept of habitual preference falsification; by fusing rational addiction models with public choice theory, I derive the dynamic stability conditions under which societies become locked into "falsification traps" despite exogenous shocks. I apply similar game-theoretic tools to the study of modern autocracy in my work on sacralized digital authoritarianism, modeling how regimes use information design and "sacred" signaling to solve coordination problems among security agents and crowdsource repression.
Beyond individual strategic behavior, I examine the macro-institutional constraints on development. In collaboration with Timur Kuran, I investigate the modernization of the Muslim world, challenging linear development models by conceptualizing modernization as a sector-specific process that generates uneven institutional outcomes. Across these strands, I employ rigorous identification strategies—from difference-in-differences to regression discontinuity designs—to empirically validate how repression, governance, and social norms jointly warp economic incentives in fragile states.
I was honored to be selected as a Bastiat Fellow by the Mercatus Center and to receive an Emergent Ventures grant from Tyler Cowen for my research agenda. Before Duke, I graduated summa cum laude (B.S. in Econ and Math) as valedictorian for class of 2024 at IBA Karachi. I have applied my analytical training in professional settings across 11 different organizations, either in part-time or full-time roles. For instance, I developed quantitative forecasting models as a Market Research Strategist at Aromasong USA, provided strategic consulting to over 100 entrepreneurs for Alibaba, generating over $370,000 in new trade and sales, and analyzed depositers' retention rate at Self-Help Credit Union, providing actionable suggestions to stabilize our primary funding sources.
Beyond academia and work, I'm passionate about philosophy, particularly Stoicism and Existentialism, and I enjoy powerlifting, watching and playing soccer, dogs, hiking, and trying new cafes.
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