Alice Mesnard
Biographic Data
| ID | 1059705 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Alice Mesnard |
| GIVEN NAMES | Alice |
| FAMILY NAME | Mesnard |
| SIGNATURE | MESNARD A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Institute for Fiscal Studies |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6899-9138 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 12 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 67 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 12 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2000 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Borders Start With Numbers: How Migration Data Create “Fake Illegals
Sudden rises in migration across the borders of the Global North have persistently attracted substantial media attention and fueled hostility toward “irregular migrants” and “bogus refugees.” While existing qualitative studies have extensively criticized the migrant-refugee distinction, we offer unique quantitative evidence of how migration numbers and labels construct impressions of increased irregular migration while in fact creating “fake ille…
Gendered Barriers to Formal Health-Care Utilization: Modeling Health-Care Demand in a Low-Resource Setting
This paper develops a model of health-care demand to study health-care choices in resource-limited settings with poor health indicators, especially for women. Using data from rural Nigeria on individual illnesses and injuries as well as the entire portfolio of locally available providers, we estimate the effect of price, distance, and quality on access to care, focusing on the heterogeneous responses to these three factors by gender. We find that…
Revolving Doors: How Externalization Policies Block Refugees and Deflect Other Migrants across Migration Routes
Migrant destination states of the Global North generally seek to stem irregular migration while remaining committed to refugee rights. To do so, these states have increasingly sought to externalize migration control, implicating migrant origin and transit states in managing the movement of persons across borders. But do externalization policies actually have an impact on unauthorized migration flows? If yes, do those impacts vary across different…
Nutrition, information and household behavior: Experimental evidence from Malawi
Incorrect knowledge of the health production function may lead to inefficient household choices and thereby to the production of suboptimal levels of health. This paper studies the effects of a randomized intervention in rural Malawi that, over a six-month period, provided mothers of young infants with information on child nutrition without supplying any monetary or in-kind resources. A simple model first investigates theoretically how nutrition …
Sale of Visas: A Smuggler's Final Song
Is there a way of eliminating human smuggling? We set up a model to simultaneously determine the provision of human smuggling services and the demand from would‐be migrants. A visa‐selling policy may be successful in eliminating smugglers by eroding their profits, but it also increases immigration. In contrast, repression decreases migration but fuels cartelized smugglers. To overcome this trade‐off we show that legalization through selling visas…
Food and Cash Transfers: Evidence from Colombia
We study food Engel curves amongst the poor population targeted by a conditional cash transfer programme in Colombia. After controlling for the endogeneity of total consumption and for the price variability across villages, our estimates imply that an increase in consumption by 10% would lead to a decrease of 1% in the share of food. However, quasi-experimental estimates of the impact of the programme show that the share of food increases. This r…
Children's Schooling and Work in the Presence of a Conditional Cash Transfer Program in Rural Colombia
The paper studies the effects of Familias en Acción, a conditional cash transfer program implemented in rural areas in Colombia since 2002, on school enrollment and child labor. Using a difference‐in‐difference framework, our results show that the program increased school participation of 14–17‐year‐old children quite substantially, by between 5 and 7 percentage points and had lower effects on the enrollment of younger children, in the region of …
The Wealth Effect on New Business Startups in a Developing Economy
The paper tests for nonlinearities in the wealth effect on self‐employment, as can arise from startup costs or liquidity constraints. Using both nonparametric and parametric methods, we show that the relationship between the probability of a return migrant to Tunisia starting up a business and the stock of his savings repatriated at return is concave for almost the entire range of our data, though we find weak evidence of a convex relationship at…
Temporary migration and capital market imperfections
This paper analyses the temporary migration decision of workers who are credit constrained. As observed with data on Tunisia, migrants who invest after returning to their country have accumulated more savings and stayed longer abroad than salaried return migrants. To capture these features, we analyse the optimal migration duration and occupational choice of workers using a life-cycle maximisation model. An econometric test enables us to evaluate…
Civil War and the Social Contract
Inheritance, land, and capital mobility linked to labour mobility
Altruism and international labour migration
Food and Cash Transfers: Evidence from Colombia
We study food Engel curves amongst the poor population targeted by a conditional cash transfer programme in Colombia. After controlling for the endogeneity of total consumption and for the price variability across villages, our estimates imply that an increase in consumption by 10% would lead to a decrease of 1% in the share of food. However, quasi-experimental estimates of the impact of the programme show that the share of food increases. This r…
Civil War and the Social Contract
Children's Schooling and Work in the Presence of a Conditional Cash Transfer Program in Rural Colombia
The paper studies the effects of Familias en Acción, a conditional cash transfer program implemented in rural areas in Colombia since 2002, on school enrollment and child labor. Using a difference‐in‐difference framework, our results show that the program increased school participation of 14–17‐year‐old children quite substantially, by between 5 and 7 percentage points and had lower effects on the enrollment of younger children, in the region of …
Nutrition, information and household behavior: Experimental evidence from Malawi
Incorrect knowledge of the health production function may lead to inefficient household choices and thereby to the production of suboptimal levels of health. This paper studies the effects of a randomized intervention in rural Malawi that, over a six-month period, provided mothers of young infants with information on child nutrition without supplying any monetary or in-kind resources. A simple model first investigates theoretically how nutrition …
Borders Start With Numbers: How Migration Data Create “Fake Illegals
Sudden rises in migration across the borders of the Global North have persistently attracted substantial media attention and fueled hostility toward “irregular migrants” and “bogus refugees.” While existing qualitative studies have extensively criticized the migrant-refugee distinction, we offer unique quantitative evidence of how migration numbers and labels construct impressions of increased irregular migration while in fact creating “fake ille…
Revolving Doors: How Externalization Policies Block Refugees and Deflect Other Migrants across Migration Routes
Migrant destination states of the Global North generally seek to stem irregular migration while remaining committed to refugee rights. To do so, these states have increasingly sought to externalize migration control, implicating migrant origin and transit states in managing the movement of persons across borders. But do externalization policies actually have an impact on unauthorized migration flows? If yes, do those impacts vary across different…
The Wealth Effect on New Business Startups in a Developing Economy
The paper tests for nonlinearities in the wealth effect on self‐employment, as can arise from startup costs or liquidity constraints. Using both nonparametric and parametric methods, we show that the relationship between the probability of a return migrant to Tunisia starting up a business and the stock of his savings repatriated at return is concave for almost the entire range of our data, though we find weak evidence of a convex relationship at…
Sale of Visas: A Smuggler's Final Song
Is there a way of eliminating human smuggling? We set up a model to simultaneously determine the provision of human smuggling services and the demand from would‐be migrants. A visa‐selling policy may be successful in eliminating smugglers by eroding their profits, but it also increases immigration. In contrast, repression decreases migration but fuels cartelized smugglers. To overcome this trade‐off we show that legalization through selling visas…
Altruism and international labour migration
Inheritance, land, and capital mobility linked to labour mobility
Civil War and the Social Contract
Temporary migration and capital market imperfections
This paper analyses the temporary migration decision of workers who are credit constrained. As observed with data on Tunisia, migrants who invest after returning to their country have accumulated more savings and stayed longer abroad than salaried return migrants. To capture these features, we analyse the optimal migration duration and occupational choice of workers using a life-cycle maximisation model. An econometric test enables us to evaluate…
The Wealth Effect on New Business Startups in a Developing Economy
The paper tests for nonlinearities in the wealth effect on self‐employment, as can arise from startup costs or liquidity constraints. Using both nonparametric and parametric methods, we show that the relationship between the probability of a return migrant to Tunisia starting up a business and the stock of his savings repatriated at return is concave for almost the entire range of our data, though we find weak evidence of a convex relationship at…
Children's Schooling and Work in the Presence of a Conditional Cash Transfer Program in Rural Colombia
The paper studies the effects of Familias en Acción, a conditional cash transfer program implemented in rural areas in Colombia since 2002, on school enrollment and child labor. Using a difference‐in‐difference framework, our results show that the program increased school participation of 14–17‐year‐old children quite substantially, by between 5 and 7 percentage points and had lower effects on the enrollment of younger children, in the region of …
Food and Cash Transfers: Evidence from Colombia
We study food Engel curves amongst the poor population targeted by a conditional cash transfer programme in Colombia. After controlling for the endogeneity of total consumption and for the price variability across villages, our estimates imply that an increase in consumption by 10% would lead to a decrease of 1% in the share of food. However, quasi-experimental estimates of the impact of the programme show that the share of food increases. This r…
Nutrition, information and household behavior: Experimental evidence from Malawi
Incorrect knowledge of the health production function may lead to inefficient household choices and thereby to the production of suboptimal levels of health. This paper studies the effects of a randomized intervention in rural Malawi that, over a six-month period, provided mothers of young infants with information on child nutrition without supplying any monetary or in-kind resources. A simple model first investigates theoretically how nutrition …
Sale of Visas: A Smuggler's Final Song
Is there a way of eliminating human smuggling? We set up a model to simultaneously determine the provision of human smuggling services and the demand from would‐be migrants. A visa‐selling policy may be successful in eliminating smugglers by eroding their profits, but it also increases immigration. In contrast, repression decreases migration but fuels cartelized smugglers. To overcome this trade‐off we show that legalization through selling visas…
Revolving Doors: How Externalization Policies Block Refugees and Deflect Other Migrants across Migration Routes
Migrant destination states of the Global North generally seek to stem irregular migration while remaining committed to refugee rights. To do so, these states have increasingly sought to externalize migration control, implicating migrant origin and transit states in managing the movement of persons across borders. But do externalization policies actually have an impact on unauthorized migration flows? If yes, do those impacts vary across different…
Borders Start With Numbers: How Migration Data Create “Fake Illegals
Sudden rises in migration across the borders of the Global North have persistently attracted substantial media attention and fueled hostility toward “irregular migrants” and “bogus refugees.” While existing qualitative studies have extensively criticized the migrant-refugee distinction, we offer unique quantitative evidence of how migration numbers and labels construct impressions of increased irregular migration while in fact creating “fake ille…
Gendered Barriers to Formal Health-Care Utilization: Modeling Health-Care Demand in a Low-Resource Setting
This paper develops a model of health-care demand to study health-care choices in resource-limited settings with poor health indicators, especially for women. Using data from rural Nigeria on individual illnesses and injuries as well as the entire portfolio of locally available providers, we estimate the effect of price, distance, and quality on access to care, focusing on the heterogeneous responses to these three factors by gender. We find that…
Economics (12 works) · Political science (7 works) · Gender, Labor, and Family Dynamics (5 works) · Sociology (5 works) · Computer Science (4 works) · Demographic economics (4 works) · Fiscal Policy and Economic Growth (4 works) · Labour economics (4 works) · Law (4 works) · Migration and Labor Dynamics (4 works)