Dr Alice Mesnard

Reader in Economics
Programme Director, MSc Development Economics

Department of Economics

Email: Alice.Mesnard.1@city.ac.uk
Telephone: +44 (0)20 7040 4590

Overview and research interests

Dr Alice Mesnard is a Reader in Economics at City University London and is Programme Director of the MSc Development Economics. She is a member of the European Development Research Network (EUDN) and a research affiliate of the CEPR. 

Prior to joining City, Dr Mesnard was a Senior Economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies. She received her PhD from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris) in 1999 in the "European Doctoral Program in Quantitative Economics". Subsequently she worked at the Center for the Evaluation of Development Policies (EdePo) and was a visiting Professor at Toulouse University.

Her main research interests are in the fields of Development Economics, Migration, Policy Evaluations and Applied Microeconomics. Her research has been mainly devoted to understanding the role of public policies in improving human development. Public policies she has been studying are related to migration, education (Familias en Acción in Colombia), labour market (New Deal programmes in the UK) and health (maternal health and Nutrition in Malawi, Health Insurance in Nigeria).

She is currently involved in large research projects on the impacts of policies on illegal/legal migration and on the links between migration and health risks in developing countries.

Interview on health risks and migration

In this video by the Population and Poverty (PopPov) Research Network, Dr Mesnard describes her research on health risks and migration.

Teaching

Development Economics (UG) and (PG), Applied Econometrics (UG)

Publications

Working papers

• Food and Cash Transfers: Evidence from Colombia, with O Attanasio, and E.Battistin. CEPR Discussion Paper DP7326 . IFS working Paper.
• Migration, violence and welfare: an empirical analysis from rural Colombia, IFS working Paper.
• Are boys and girls affected differently when the household head leaves for good? Evidence from school and work choices in Colombia, with E. Fitzsimons, CEPR Discussion Paper DP7040.
• Migration and The Equilibrium Prevalence of Infectious Diseases, with P.Seabright CEPR Discussion Paper DP6651, 2008.
• Ethnic parity in labour market outcomes for benefit claimants, with C.Crawford, L. Dearden, J.Shaw, and B.Sianesi, CEPR Discussion Paper DP5321. IFS working paper.
• Controlling Illegal Migration : Legalisation or repression?, with E.Auriol.

Journal articles

• Food and Cash Transfers: Evidence from Colombia, with O Attanasio and E.Battistin, forthcoming in the Economic Journal. Article first published online: 20 October 2011. DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-0297.2011.02473.x.
  
• Escaping infectious diseases through migration? Quarantine measures under incomplete information about infection risk, with P.Seabright, Journal of Public Economics, 93, 931-938, 2009.
• Child Education and Work Choices in the Presence of a Conditional Cash Transfer Programme in Rural Colombia, with Attanasio O, Fitzsimons E, M.I Guterrez, Meghir C, Economic Development and Cultural Change,  58:2, 181-210, 2010.
• The wealth effect on new business sartups in a developing economy» with M. Ravallion, Economica Vol.73, Issue 291, 2006.
• The impact of a conditional cash transfer programme on consumption in Colombia, with Orazio Attanasio, Fiscal Studies, December 2006.
• Ethnic differences in birth outcomes in England, with Lorraine Dearden and Jonathan Shaw, Fiscal Studies, March 2006
• Temporary migration and capital market imperfections, Oxford Economic Papers 56 (2004), 242-262.
• Temporary migration and Self-Employment: Evidence from Tunisia, Brussels, Economic Review, vol 47(1), March 2004.
• Civil war and the social contract, with J.P.Azam, Public Choice, vol 115 (3)  June 2003.
• Intergenerational mobility and temporary migration, Louvain Economic Review, vol 67(1) 2001.
• Inheritance, land and capital mobility linked to labour migration, with D.Gaumont, Journal of Population Economics, vol(14) 2001.
• Altruism and international labour migration, with D.Gaumont, Journal of Population Economics, vol (13) 2000.

Policy reports

• Evaluación del impacto del programa Familias en Acción - subsidos condicionados de la red de apoyo social: Informe del primer seguimento » with Orazio Attanasio, Erich Battistin, Emla Fitzsimons, Costas Meghir, Marcos Vera-Hernandez et al., March 2006. Department of National Planning of Colombia.
• How effective are conditional cash transfers? Evidence from Colombia » with Orazio Attanasio, Erich Battistin, Emla Fitzsimons and Marcos Vera-Hernandez, January 2005, IFS Briefing Notes BN54.
• Displacement, conflict and welfare : an empirical analysis » with O.Attanasio and C.Castro, Department of National Planning of Colombia, 2005.
• The impact of a conditional cash transfer programme on consumption in Colombia », with Orazio Attanasio, IFS report summary, April 2005.
• Estimating Ethnic Parity in Jobcentre Plus Programmes: A quantitative analysis using the Work and Pensions Longitudinal Study (WPLS)  » with C.Crawford, L. Dearden, J.Shaw, B.Sianesi and P.Urwin, Department for Work and Pensions, june 2007. and Pensions, june 2007.

Main research grants awarded

• 2009-2012:  AFD-HEWLETT "Health Risks and Migration in Sub-Saharan Africa" .  Principal Investigator.
• 2008-2011 :  ESRC-HEWLETT "Effects of Reproductive Health on Poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa" Co-applicant.
• 2007: ESRC Reference RES-000-22-1742 "School supply and the effectiveness of Conditional Cash Transfers" Principal investigator.
• 2007-2009 : DFID-ESRC "Human Capital Accumulation and Poverty Reduction in Developing Countries". Co-applicant.
• 2005-2006 : Department for Work and Pensions (UK) Reference Number 11c/04/dwp "Ethnic Parity in Jobcentre Plus Programmes and mainstream services". Co-applicant.