Rate My Professor Alison Booth

Alison Booth is an Emeritus Professor of Economics in the Research School of Economics, College of Business and Economics, at the Australian National University. She holds a PhD in Economics from the London School of Economics, awarded in 1984, and an MSc (Econ) from the same institution in 1980. Her distinguished career encompasses positions as Professor of Economics at the University of Essex from 1995 to 2013, with a joint appointment at ANU from 2002 to 2013, followed by full-time at ANU until 2021. She held the Fred Gruen Professorship at ANU from 2002 to 2003 and served as Head of the Economics Program in the Research School of Social Sciences from 2008 to 2010. Booth is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research (London), Institute of Labor Economics (Bonn), and Institute for Employment Research (Nürnberg). She was President of the European Association of Labour Economists from 2006 to 2008, Editor-in-Chief of Labour Economics from 1999 to 2004, and currently serves on the editorial boards of Labour Economics, ILR Review, and Economic Record. In 2017, she was elected to the Executive Committee of the International Economic Association.

Booth's research specializations include labour economics and experimental economics, with particular emphasis on cultural influences on economic preferences and their economic outcomes, the economics of gender, and imperfect competition in the labour market. Much of her work has been supported by grants from the Australian Research Council Discovery Program, the Leverhulme Trust, the Nuffield Foundation, and the Economic and Social Research Council. She has published extensively in premier journals such as the Quarterly Journal of Economics, Review of Economics and Statistics, Economic Journal, Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Review, and Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization. Notable publications include her book The Economics of the Trade Union (Cambridge University Press, 1995), selected as Princeton University Economics Book of the Year in 1996, and recent articles such as “Gender Differences in Willingness to Compete: The Role of Culture and Institutions” (Economic Journal, 2019) and “Trade Unions and the Welfare of Rural-Urban Migrant Workers in China” (ILR Review, 2021). Her accolades include Fellowship of the Econometric Society (2019), the Distinguished Fellow Award from the Economic Society of Australia (2017), and Fellowship of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia (2005).