Dr Alice Mesnard

Overview

Alice Mesnard is a Reader in Economics at City University of London and the Chair of the Academic Board of the University of Paris Dauphine -PSL, London. Her main research interests are in the fields of Development Economics, Migration, Policy Evaluations and Applied Microeconomics.

Prior to joining City, she was a Senior Economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies where she worked at the Center for the Evaluation of Development Policies (EdePo). Her research has been mainly devoted to understanding the role of public policies in improving human development. Public policies she has been studying are mainly related to migration, education (Conditional Cash Transfer programme "Familias en Acción" in Colombia), health (maternal health and nutrition programmes in Malawi, Health Insurance in Nigeria, Quarantine measures after the outbreak of infectious diseases such as Ebola) and labour market (New Deal programmes in the UK).

She has been strongly involved in the policy debate about how to eliminate Human Smuggling and her research has led to dialogs with policy makers on how to weaken smuggling markets.

You can watch here a video about some of her research impacts.
You can watch her on TV5 Monde speaking (in French) about pricing the smugglers out of the market : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlvFCWWvMRU

She is committed to building more effective policies in order to weaken smuggling markets through the development of legal markets. The first application of this approach has been migration: her research proposes novel systems of visas to fight against human smuggling and meet the labour market needs of host countries. She has been collaborating in a large interdisciplinary H2020 project to study the drivers of irregular migration and the impacts of migration policies on migration flows to Europe.

This line of research also led her to design a policy mix to regulate the cannabis market through the implementation of a legal market combined with the enforcement of sanctions against illegal activities. The initial findings of this research are in the 2019 report of the Economic Advisory Committee of the French government (CAE) on how to legalise cannabis in France and have been discussed by the National Assembly.

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 was an Assistant Professor at the University of Toulouse and has since been a visiting Professor in several Universities including the Toulouse School of Economics, the University of Paris Dauphine and the Paris School of Economics.

Qualifications

1. Qualified Professor, Conseil National des Universites (France), Feb 2017
2. Habilitation a Diriger des Recherches, Toulouse 1 Capitole University, France, Jun 2010
3. PhD, École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), France, 1999
4. European Doctoral Programme, EHESS (Paris) and LSE (London School of Economics), France, 1999
5. Diploma «Ingénieur, Statisticien, Economiste», National School of Statistics and Economics (ENSAE ParisTech), France, 1993

Employment

1. Visiting Professor, Paris School of Economics, Jan 2014 – Jan 2016
2. Visiting Professor, Paris Dauphine University, Paris, 2014
3. Reader in Economics, City, University of London, 2010 – present
4. Visiting Professor, University of Toulouse, 2009
5. Senior Research Economist, Institute for Fiscal Studies, Jan 2004 – Jan 2010
6. Visiting Researcher, University College London / IFS, Jan 2003 – Jan 2004
7. Assistant Professor, University of Toulouse, Jan 1999 – Jan 2003

Memberships of professional organisations

1. Member, European Development Research Network (EUDN)
2. External Fellow, CREAM, Center for Research and Analysis of Migration, London
3. Research Associate, EdePo, Institute for Fiscal Studies, London
4. Research affiliate, CEPR, Center for Economic Policy Research, London

Languages

English (can read, write, speak, understand spoken and peer review), French (can read, write, speak, understand spoken and peer review), German (can read) and Spanish; Castilian (can read).

Teaching

Teaching Interests

Development Economics, Population Economics, Migration, Applied Econometrics, Social Policies, Public Economics.

Teaching Experience

2010-to present: Lectures at City University in Development Economics to PG and UG Students. Lectures in Applied Econometrics to third year UG students. Lectures in Applied Microeconomics to first year UG students. Lectures in Research Methods to PG students.

2014 onwards : Lectures in «Social Policies in developing countries» to PG students in Master PPD at the Paris School of Economics.

2005, 2006: Lectures in Public Economics to UG Students in Oxford and Cambridge Universities.

1999-2003: Core Module in Development Economics to PG students in Toulouse University

1999-2003: Core Module in Development Economics to students training for “Ingenieur” special diploma in Toulouse University.

1999-2003 : Core Module on Economics to first year undergraduate students in Law. Organised experimental games to simulate market mechanisms.

1999-2001 : Trained teachers in France to prepare for the French national “Agregation” competition which gives them the title of Professor. Lectures in population economics.

1997-1999 : Lectures in microeconomics to undergraduate students at the University of Paris 2.

Main research grants awarded

- 2010-2013: AFD-HEWLETT "Health Risks and Migration in Sub-Saharan Africa" . Principal Investigator.
- 2008-2012 : ESRC-HEWLETT "Effects of Reproductive Health on Poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa" Co-Investigator.
- 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-Investigator.
- 2005-2006 : Department for Work and Pensions (UK) Reference Number 11c/04/dwp "Ethnic Parity in Jobcentre Plus Programmes and mainstream services". Co-Investigator.

Featured publications

1. De Weerdt, J., Genicot, G. and Mesnard, A. (2019). Asymmetry of Information within Family Networks. Journal of Human Resources, 54(1), pp. 225–254. doi:10.3368/jhr.54.1.0616.8023r1.
2. Mesnard, A.M. and Auriol, E. (2016). To Control Migration Flows and Defeat Human Smuggling, Sell Visas. Washington DC: Center for Global Development.

Publications by category