Pande was the Co-Director of Center for International Development at Harvard University's Evidence for Policy Design research program (EPoD) and serves on the board of directors of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, MIT.
[2] Her outstanding and empirical findings in fields of governance and accountability, women’s empowerment, role of credit in poverty, the economic aspects of the environment and the potential of policy design in these areas, won her the Infosys Prize 2022 in Social Sciences.
Her doctoral thesis, dated 2000, was titled The economics of public policy: Interventions in electoral representation, information transmission and investment choices.
[6] Pande's research work focuses on the economic costs and benefits of informal and formal institutions and the role of public policy in affecting change.
Her work is focused in India, where she examines how institutions can be designed to empower historically disadvantaged groups; how low-cost improvements in information collection and dissemination can enable flexible regulation and more efficient outcomes in areas as diverse as environmental protection and elections; and how biased social norms, unless challenged by public policy, can worsen individual well-being and reduce economic efficiency.