Christopher Cotton is a Professor of Economics at Queen's University where he holds the Jarislowsky-Deutsch Chair in Economic & Financial Policy. He teaches undergraduate and graduate courses across the Department of Economics, the School of Policy Studies, and the Smith School of Business. He is also a cross-appointed professor in the Translational Medicine Graduate Faculty in the Queen's School of Medicine.
Prof. Cotton’s research is at the intersection of information strategy and public economics, often focusing on issues of evidence-based policy and strategy. He has work in theoretical, experimental, and empirical economics, on questions in governance, public health, human capital, education, collective action, and metascience.
hi is the director of the John Deutsch Institute for the Study of Economic Policy, and previously was co-Director of the NSERC- and PHAC-funded One Society Network, a Canada-wide research initiative bringing together economists, epidemiologists, and public health officials to study the broader impacts of pandemic policies.
His research has been published in top scientific journals, such as the American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, Journal of Public Economics, Journal of Labor Economics, and Management Science, and he has included seminal papers on several topics. His research has received grant funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), the Tri-Council New Frontiers in Research Fund (NFRF), Canada's Digital Technology Supercluster, the Spencer Foundation, and others. Prof. Cotton is also an enthusiastic teacher and adviser. He advises many Ph.D. and M.A. students and won the department's award for undergraduate teaching.
Selection. Full list on CV.
C. Cotton, B. Hickman, J. List, J. Price, and S. Roy (2026). Disentangling Motivation and Study Productivity as Drivers of Adolescent Human Capital Formation: Evidence from a Field Experiment and Structural Analysis, Journal of Political Economy
C. Cotton, ed., Lasting Disruption: Health, Economic, and Social Impacts of COVID-19 on Canada. The State of the Federation book series, McGill-Queen's University Press, 2025
C. Cotton, A. Alam, S. Tosta, T. G. Buchman, and D. Maslove (2025). Effect of Monetary Incentives on Peer Review Acceptance and Completion: A Quasi-Randomized Intervention Trial, Critical Care Medicine (high-impact medical journal)
A. Nordstrom and C. Cotton (2025), The Impact of a Severe Drought on Education: More Schooling But Not More Learning, American Educational Research Journal (leading education journal)
L. Corazzini, C. Cotton, E. Longo, and T. Reggiani (2024), Coordinated selection of collection action: Wealth-interest bias and inequality, Journal of Public Economics
C. Cotton, B. Hickman and J. Price (2022), Affirmative action and human capital investment: Evidence from a large contest experiment, Journal of Labor Economics
M. Agranov, C. Cotton and C. Tergiman (2020), Persistence of Power: Repeated multilateral bargaining with endogenous agenda setting authority, Journal of Public Economics (lead article)
R. Boleslavsky, C. Cotton and H. Gurnani (2017), Demonstrations and price competition in new product release, Management Science
L. Corazzini, C. Cotton and P. Valbonesi (2015), Donor coordination in project funding: Evidence from a threshold public goods experiment, Journal of Public Economics
R. Boleslavsky and C. Cotton (2015), Grading standards and education quality, American Economic Journal: Microeconomics
R. Boleslavsky and C. Cotton (2015), Information and extremism in elections, American Economic Journal: Microeconomics
C. Cotton (2013), Submission fees and response times in academic publishing, American Economic Review
C. Cotton (2012), Pay to play politics: Informational lobbying and contribution limits when money buys access, Journal of Public Economics
C. Cotton (2009), Should we tax or cap political contributions? A lobbying model with policy favors and access, Journal of Public Economics (lead article)