Lisa Cameron (born 27 January 1967) is an Australian economist currently working as a Professional Research Fellow at the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research at the University of Melbourne.
Biography
Lisa Cameron earned her Bachelor of Commerce at the University of Melbourne in 1989, where she graduated with first class honours. This was followed by completing a Masters of Commerce degree in 1992, as well as a Graduate Diploma in Indonesian Modern Language in 1999. Thereafter, Cameron completed a M.A. and subsequently proceeded to complete a PhD in economics at Princeton University. While at Princeton, she received the Bradley Fellowship award and scholarship from the Department of Economics, the Robertson Fellow award at the Woodrow Wilson School, and the Mellon Grant for research in Indonesia, aligning with her research projects. After her graduation in 1996, she continued in an academic and research capacity at the University of Melbourne for 13 years, being promoted to Director of the Asian Economics Centre in 2007 and becoming a Professor for the Department of Economics in 2010. In order to pursue greater involvement in the developmental economics space, Cameron moved to Monash University in 2010, where she acted as the Director for the Centre for Development Economics (CDE) and as a Professor in the Department of Econometrics and Business Statistics. Since 2017, her current role at the Melbourne Institute has allowed her to concentrate on socio-economic research matters in developing countries of interest.
In addition to her academic position, Cameron maintains affiliations with Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) in Boston, while actively contributing publications for the IZA Institute of Labor Economics in Germany, joining as a Research Fellow in February 2012. In 2014, she was also elected as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Social Sciences. Cameron has extensive experience working with international development organizations and global agencies, such as the World Bank and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (Australia).
Research and published literature
Cameron's research interests include labour economics, health economics, and developmental economics, specifically in developing nations within Asia (with core countries of focus being Indonesia and China). In most of her research she takes an empirical microeconomics lens, often applying techniques of experimental economics to better understand and gain insights on socio-economic and policy-related issues. While at the World Bank, Cameron focused her earlier efforts in 2004 by preparing a brief on gender inequality for the Indonesian government and a developing research program for the Bank that centered around similar issues. Most recently, she took on Principal Investigator Roles on the evaluation of Indonesian sanitation interventions and child and maternal health trends. Her involvement in DAFTA follows a similar pattern of research, most notably with research projects in disability, gender inequality, and maternal mortality.
Research on developmental economics
With a large focus on the welfare of disadvantaged and marginalized groups and a particular focus around sanitation systems in developing communities, Cameron has published extensive work and forthcoming publications in areas within developmental economics. Cameron's work with Diana Conteras Suarez in evaluating conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs includes new considerations around the role of consumer choice and individual preferences on the likelihood of household participation in these programs, and whether there is evidence of greater aspirations for higher-level education for their children. Through a study conducted in Colombia, Cameron concludes that despite CCT programs driving marginal increases in human capital, the association is primarily due to the rise in disposable income that allows for a greater propensity to invest in schooling. In reality, these transfer programs had no impact on the participants' time preferences, where parents actually assigned a lower probability to their children completing higher levels of education with their involvement in these programs. This suggests a potential risk of over-dependency on money transfers as the children becoming increasingly educated.