Christopher Cotton
Professor and Jarislowsky-Deutsch Chair in Economic & Financial Policy

Queen’s University
cotton@econ.queensu.ca

I am a Professor in the Department of Economics in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (primary appointment). I am also a Professor in the Translational Medicine Graduate Program in the School of Medicine (cross appointment), and am an affiliated faculty member in the Queen’s School of Policy Studies. I serve as the Director of the John Deutsch Institute for the Study of Economic Policy (JDI) at Queen’s and as the Director of Research at Limestone Analytics.

Much of my research focuses on the role of better evidence in decision making across a variety of environments, including education, health, development, business strategy, and politics.

Research Updates

• Major Grant (April 2021): Received grant with Chris McCabe (Institute for Health Economics) to establish and serve as co-directors for a nationwide One Society Network to build research links between economists & epidemiologists under the NSERC’s Emerging Infectious Disease Modeling initiative ($1.25m)
• Accepted article (Apr 2021): “Quantifying the economic impacts of COVID-19 policy responses in (almost) real time,” with B. Crowley, B. Kashi, H. Lloyd-Ellis, and F. Tremblay, Canadian Journal of Economics
• New publication (April 2021): “Training healthcare workers increases IFA use and adherence: Evidence and cost-effectiveness analysis from Bangladesh,” with Z. Kurzawa, N. Mazurkewich, A. Verney, J. Busch-Hallen, and B. Kashi, Maternal & Child Nutrition
• Published article (Nov 2020): “Delegation and coordination with multiple threshold public goods: experimental evidence,” with Luca Corazzini and Tomaso Reggiani, Experimental Economics, 23: 1030-1068, Dec 2020
• New working paper (Nov 2020): “Information and Advocacy Campaigns in Support of Girls’ Education Increase Math Performance and Enrolment,” with Ardyn Nordstrom, Jordan Nanowski, and Eric Richter
• New working paper (Oct 2020): “Productivity Versus Motivation in Adolescent Human Capital Production: Evidence from a Structurally-Motivated Field Experiment,” with Brent Hickman, John List, Joseph Price, and Sutanuka Roy (NBER w27995, QED WP 1444) invited submission to the Journal of Political Economy
• Accepted article (Sept 2020): “Affirmative action and human capital investment: Evidence from a randomized field experiment,” with Brent Hickman and Joseph Price, Journal of Labor Economics

Recent Policy & Outreach

• Director, John Deutsch Institute for the Study of Economic Policy at Queen’s University, which supports policy-relevant academic research, and builds connections between researchers and policymakers
• Director of Research, Limestone Analytics, a consulting firm, which helps clients assess the feasibility, financing and impact of their projects, programs and policies as they work towards advancing Sustainable Development Goals. I am a co-owner and have helped build the firm since 2017. Its client list includes some of the world’s leading NGOs, foundations & governments
• Co-Director, of the NSERC funded One Society Network, building connections between economists, epidemiologists and public health officials.
• Member of the Royal Society of Canada COVID-19 working group on economic recovery
• Economics Lead for Global Canada’s COVID Strategic Choices Group, which brought together leading academics, policymakers, and business leaders to compare economic and health costs and benefits of alternative COVID strategies and recommend policy including the “Canadian Shield” proposal
• Economics Lead for the Looking Glass project, funded under a major grant from Canada’s Digital Technology Supercluster to form a partnership between academics and industry to build a COVID projection tool combining economics & epidemiological modeling ($2.2m)
• Lead evaluator for the IGATE-T Girls’ Education Challenge project in Zimbabwe funded by World Vision & the UK Govt (midline report is here)
• STUDIO Model Economic Projections: Co-authored numerous policy briefs, reports, and dashboards comparing economic costs under alternative policy strategies for provincial, federal & international policymakers
• Numerous media appearances in print, radio and television regarding the economic impact of COVID-19

Teaching & Advising

• Professional Program: co-developer and professor for the Certified Professional Impact Analyst program at Queen’s, which teaches professionals from government and the social sector how to make use of evidence in the planning, financing, and evaluation of programs and policies
• MPA & PMPA Program: Led the redesign of the core economics courses for the MPA & PMPA programs in the Queen’s School of Policy Studies. Focus is on the practical use of economics tools to assess the feasibility and effectiveness of policies and programs. Currently co-instructor for these courses.
• Cross-appointment with School of Medicine: Joined the School of Medicine’s Translational Medicine Graduate Program
• Economics Graduate Program: Faculty member in the Economics Graduate Program, where I teach graduate Public Economics and advise several MA and PhD students and post-docs.
• Professional Program: Led team to develop a new course for USAID education staff on the financing of education systems and programs, including public financial management, private sector engagement, and innovative finance. Current team lead and faculty member.
• Mitacs Researchers: Supervised of co-supervised seven graduate students working on research projects involving COVID-19 funded through Mitacs grants

Select Recent Presentations

• Queen’s School of Medicine: Grad rounds presentation to researchers on practitioners on the connections between economic and epidemiological modeling, April 2021
• COVID Corner presentation, webinar to more than 1300 people through the University of Calgary School of Medicine, on the connections between economic and epidemiological modeling, March 2021
• Various presentations to think tanks and governments on the economic impact of COVID-19 and my policy work