Lisa Cameron

The second key area of Cameron's economic contributions are specifically around policy considerations, stemming directly from her extensive experience at the World Bank and DAFTA. In a key publication on social protection for women in developing nations updated in February 2019, Cameron asserts that there are large barriers to accessibility for women looking for social protection schemes, and that optimizing the delivery and uptake of these initiatives requires a concerted effort to design programs that can be scaled up to reach a large number of women. Empirically, she finds that while employment guarantee schemes, pension schemes, microfinance, and conditional cash transfer programs can all be useful in closing the gap in earnings and sustained work, they are often not tailored to specific groups of women and thus fail to adequately protect women. These necessary accommodations can be filled jointly by governments and the efforts of non-governmental organizations to account for the individual differences in women's everyday lives.

Extending the work on labour force participation further, Cameron has conducted a general study of gender inequality in Indonesia that builds on previous research and literature from the Global Gender Gap Report in 2014, providing new insights specifically in the East Asian region. This includes the extent of the gender-wage gap totalling 41%, suggesting large levels of wage discrimination against women with only a small proportion of this explainable by differences in productive characteristics. Additionally, she notes that the phenomenon of "sticky floors", where women in lower-paid and lower-skilled jobs face more difficulties compared to women at the top of the spectrum, compounds with industrial segregation by occupation and contributes greatly to this disparity. Cameron notes that future priorities and initiatives to mitigate effects of the wage gap should be closely tied to entry and re-entry decisions into the labour market at the individual level.

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 2013, 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).

Lisa 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.

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.

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.