Her study Risky Business: The Market for Unprotected Sex with Paul Gertler and Stefano Bertozzi was published in 2005 in the Journal of Political Economy.
For instance, in The Prostitute's Allure: The Return to Beauty in Commercial Sex Markets published with Raj Arunachalam in 2012 in B.E.
[10] Shah has studied the effect of regulation and suppression of sex workers on various women's health outcomes including domestic violence and sexually transmitted infections in order to develop more effective policies and programs to combat such negative outcomes.
[12] Cunningham and Shah followed this theme with a historical study of a decriminalization of indoor sex work in Rhode Island in 2003.
Shah has also contributed to our understanding of the way in which internet technology improves the functioning of male sex markets.
Shah was also co-editor of the Oxford University Press Handbook for the Economics of Prostitution with Scott Cunningham in 2016.
In March 2014, Manisha Shah and Lisa Cameron, published a paper: Risk-Taking Behavior in the Wake of Natural Disasters.