Ashraf earned a
B.A. in economics from
Stanford University in 1998, and an
M.A. and
Ph.D. in economics from
Harvard University in 2003 and 2005, respectively. After her studies, she began working at
Harvard Business School in the Negotiation, Organizations and Markets Unit as assistant professor (2005–10) and later as associate professor (2010–16). Since 2016 Ashraf has been a professor at the
London School of Economics. Ashraf maintains affiliations with the
CEPR,
J-PAL, and
BREAD, in particular as research director of the Marshall Institute for Philanthropy and Social Entrepreneurship and co-director of the psychology and economics programme within the Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines (STICERD). She is also an editor of Economica and a referee for numerous academic journals in economics.[2]
She is a Fellow of the
European Economic Association.[3]
Commitment savings accounts (i.e. accounts that restrict access to savings for a pre-specified period) may be attractive to women (but not men) displaying
hyperbolic discounting and are partly effective in increasing their saving rates (with
Dean Karlan and
Wesley Yin);[4]
Spouses' contributions to their household's income depend on which spouse controls the household's saving and spending and on whether information about spouses' incomes is private;[5]
Most of the (surprisingly small) variance in trust between
trust games and
dictator games played in
Russia,
South Africa, and the
United States can be explained by reciprocity expectations, with a smaller role for unconditional kindness, while variance in trustworthiness is mainly explained by unconditional kindness (with
Iris Bohnet and Nikita Piankov);[6]
Women (in
Zambia) who are given concealable
contraceptives in their husbands' presence are 19% less likely to seek
family planning services, 25% less likely to use the contraceptives, and 17% more likely to give birth (with
Erica Field and
Jean Lee);[7][8]
Higher prices may stimulate the use of health products, e.g. home water purification solutions, in developing countries due to a screening effect (only households that expect to use the product frequently buy it) but probably not because of psychological
sunk cost effects (with James Berry and
Jesse M. Shapiro).[9]
TIAA-CREF Paul. A Samuelson Award Certificate of Excellence (for Tying Odysseus to the Mast: Evidence from a Commitment Savings Product in the Philippines with
Dean Karlan and
Wesley Yin): 2006