On 2 October 2019, Muhammad Saleem successfully defended his PhD thesis on 'Evaluating Political Capture and Targeting Performance of the Benazir Income Support Program in Pakistan'.
In his thesis, Muhammad Saleem evaluates political capture and the targeting performance of the Benazir Income Support Program (BISP) under its two different tar-geting phases. BISP is a unique targeted social safety net program introduced in 2008-09 during an economic and financial crisis in Pakistan.