Chris Cotton

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Research overview: My work focuses on learning, information, and incentives as forces that shape institutions, policy design, and innovation, and that affect whether collective action translates into lasting impact. Using economic theory, experiments, and empirical methods, I study how expertise develops, how evidence influences decisions, and how organizations translate knowledge into action.

My research has appeared in journals including American Economic Review and Journal of Political Economy, as well as in an array of high-impact journals across economics and in business, education, medicine, and the sciences. It has received millions in grant funding. This work forms part of a research program examining how knowledge is built, communicated, and translated into action, with applications in evidence-based decision-making, collective action, education, health, governance, and environmental policy.

You can see my publications and my CV.

Research Supervision, Teaching, & Program Development: I have supervised the research of more than 50 graduate students who have gone on to successful careers in academia, government, and the private sector (list on my CV). Past undergraduate, graduate, and professional courses in economic theory, econometrics, experiments, public economics, development economics, and policy evaluation have trained students to design and interpret evidence for decision-making. I co-created the Certificate in Professional Impact Analysis, led the redesign of the economics curriculum in Queen’s Masters of Public Administration, and developed a global professional-training program on public finance and education systems for USAID. Across these initiatives, my work has focused on building individual and institutional capacity to use evidence rigorously and responsibly.

Leadership & Policy Engagement: I am Director of the John Deutsch Institute for the Study of Economic Policy (JDI) at Queen’s University and co-lead of the Canadian Economic Association’s Canadian Public Economics Group (CPEG).

In the aftermath of Covid-19, I co-led the NSERC- and PHAC-funded One Society Network for Emerging Infectious Disease Modeling, a nationwide research initiative connecting economists, epidemiologists, and public health leaders to study the broader impacts of pandemic policy. During the pandemic, I also served on Global Canada’s Strategic Choices Group and the Royal Society of Canada’s working group on economic recovery. This work culminated in my nomination for the 2022 Governor General’s Innovation Award, the book Lasting Disruption, and research infrastructure for cross-disciplinary engagement during future crises.

I previously helped establish Limestone Analytics as an evaluation firm for governments and organizations, including the World Bank, World Health Organization, Gates Foundation, USAID, Millennium Challenge Corporation, World Vision, and Nutrition International. While I limit my current involvement to research partnerships aligned with my scholarly work, these partnerships keep my research tied to real policies and programs and expose me to the challenges of funding, decision-making, and how institutions actually operate. They give me opportunities to test and refine theory and shape the questions I ask and the way I teach.

Recent News & Updates:

2/3/26: New Forum article at Issues in Science and Technology (National Academy of Sciences)
introducing the “AI-Expertise Paradox”: the tools that let us perform more like experts reduce our chances of becoming experts, building on David Autor’s article on AI and expertise.
1/10/26: Article disentangling drivers of studying and learning published at the Journal of Political Economy.
1/5/26: Article using optimal full matching analysis to disentangle the impact of different intervention features accepted at the Journal of Development Effectiveness.
1/5/26: Kicking off a course on evidence-based policy and program evaluation at the Queen’s School of Policy Studies.
12/28/25: New working paper on how the timing of star-performer engagement on teams affect approaches to collaboration and eventual team success.

12/12/25: Lasting Disruption: Economic and Social Impacts of COVID-19 on Canada has been published by McGill-Queen’s University Press. I was the editor for the volume, which represents collaborations among economists, epidemiologists, public health researchers, and other researchers from the One Society Network, the Royal Society of Canada, and the NSERC Emerging Infectious Disease Modeling initiative leadership.
12/2/25: another round of commentary about my experiment incentivizing journal referees has been published at Critical Care Medicine.
12/1/25: two-part summary of my speech at the 38th Annual Smith School of Business Economic Forecast Lunch posted on EconomicsandPolicy.ca. Part 1 (the Canadian economy is broken) and Part 2 (five scenarios for an uncertain economy).
11/28/25: Media coverage in the Whig Standard.
11/27/25: speaker at the KEDCo and Smith School of Business 38th Annual Forecast Lunch.
11/20/25: my forthcoming Journal of Political Economy paper on the reasons kids struggle in school is now online.
11/10/25: Lasting Disruption, my forthcoming book (I am the editor and a contributing author) from McGill-Queen’s University Press is finally going to the printer.
11/7/25: Canadian Public Economics Group annual meetings (I co-lead CPEG).
10/22/25: new publication questioning the interprovincial trade reform promises in IRPP volume.
10/21/25: appointed specialty editor at the upstart Behavioral Public Policy, Frontiers in Behavioral Economics open science journal.
10/20/25: kicking off four weeks of executive teaching in the CPIA program at Smith School of Business.
9/25: new publication on the role of evidence in COVID policy published in Frontiers in Public Health.
9/5/25: I am teaching a new course: MGMT 988: Stats & Econometrics for masters and PhD students in the Smith School of Business.
9/3/25: 10th International Conference on Peer Review and Scientific Publishing.
8/25: new publication on how droughts and environmental shocks impact education in American Educational Research Journal (flagship journal in education).
6/9/25: editorial in The Hill Times on interprovincial trade reform.
6/6/25: co-authored an article summarizing my recent work on community engagement in support of girls’ education at VoxDev.
5/25: Canadian Economics Association annual meetings (I organized the public economics sessions).
5/25: our March article in Critical Care Medicine kicked off forum discussion and several commentary pieces.
4/25/25: moderator for Queen’s School of Policy Studies public symposium on Integrating Health and Social Policy.
3/25: my work with PhD candidate Daniel Teeter is guiding interprovincial trade reform.
3/25: media coverage for the CCM article in Nature, Nature again, and the Queen’s Gazette.
3/25: new publication in Critical Care Medicine; this was the lead article and was accompanied by a journal forward and editorial.
3/25: expert report on the impact of government policy on inflation during COVID-19 (litigation support).
2/25: new publication in World Bank Economic Review.