Alison Booth

Alison Booth
Booth delivering the Maureen Brunt Lecture at Monash University in 2024.
Born
Alison Lee Booth

Melbourne, Australia
Academic background
EducationLondon School of Economics
Tony Atkinson
Academic work
DisciplineLabour economics
InstitutionsAustralian National University
University of Essex
Website

Alison Booth is an Australian labour economist, academic and novelist. She is an emeritus professor of economics at the Australian National University (ANU). Her research examines labour-market institutions, trade unions, training, gender differences, competition and risk preferences. She is a Fellow of the Econometric Society and the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia. Booth has also published eight novels, including Stillwater Creek, The Philosopher's Daughters and Death at Booroomba, and has published fiction as A. L. Booth.

Early life and education

Booth was born in Melbourne and grew up in Sydney. Her father, Norman Booth, wrote the Australian war novel Up the Dusty Track.

Booth studied economics at the London School of Economics, receiving a Master of Science in economics in 1980 and a PhD in 1984. Her doctoral research, supervised by Professor Sir Tony Atkinson, examined the microeconomic behaviour of trade unions and union membership.

Career

Booth began her academic career as a teaching assistant at the London School of Economics from 1981 to 1983. She subsequently held lectureships at the University of Bristol, City University London, Brunel University and Birkbeck College. She was professor of economics at the University of Essex from 1995 to 2013.

In 2002, Booth joined the Australian National University (ANU), where she was professor of economics until 2014 and is now an emeritus professor. She held the F. H. Gruen Professorship from 2002 to 2003 and served as head of the Economics Program in the university's Research School of Social Sciences from 2008 to 2010. Her visiting appointments have included the Reserve Bank of Australia, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Amsterdam and ANU.

Booth was editor-in-chief of Labour Economics from 1999 to 2004 and president of the European Association of Labour Economists from 2006 to 2008. She also served on the council of the European Society for Population Economics and on the council of the Royal Economic Society.

In 2017, Booth received the Distinguished Fellow Award from the Economic Society of Australia, and in 2019 she was elected a Fellow of the Econometric Society.

Research

Booth's research is primarily in labour economics and also spans behavioural economics, experimental economics and the economics of gender. Her early work examined trade unions, wage determination, employment, redundancy payments and work-related training. Her later research has focused on gender differences in competition and risk-taking, single-sex education, labour-market discrimination, migration, and the influence of institutions and culture on economic behaviour.

In research on education and risk preferences, Booth and Patrick Nolen found that girls from single-sex schools were less risk-averse than girls from coeducational schools, which they associated with reduced exposure to gender norms. She has also studied women's willingness to take career risks when supported by other women.

Her comparative research has examined how institutions and culture influence competitive behaviour, including the effects of the Cultural Revolution in China and gender differences in competition in Japan and South Korea.

Booth and her co-authors have also studied the intergenerational effects of the Cultural Revolution, reporting lower trust and willingness to compete among descendants of people mistreated during the upheaval.

Her research on trade unions and migration found that active unions were associated with higher incomes, improved employment conditions and fewer mental-health problems among rural–urban migrant workers in China.

Booth has also investigated labour-market discrimination through callback rates for applicants with Anglo-Saxon and non-Anglo-Saxon-sounding names. She has advocated anonymous recruitment procedures while arguing that later stages of recruitment must also address bias.

Fiction

Booth began writing fiction with short stories published in the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia, and has published eight novels. In a 2026 interview with ANU Reporter, she discussed parallels between economics and fiction writing.

Her debut novel, Stillwater Creek (2010), was the first volume of a trilogy set in the fictional Australian town of Jingera. A review in The Sunday Telegraph described the novel as portraying a period shaped by memories of the Second World War, fear of communism and conservative social conventions. The novel was highly commended in the 2011 ACT Book of the Year Award. It was subsequently issued in condensed form through Reader's Digest Select Editions in Australasia and the United Kingdom. It was also translated into French by Hélène Collon as Les Rivages du Souvenir and published by Presses de la Cité in 2011.

The trilogy continued with The Indigo Sky (2011), which uses Jingera to explore social and political issues in postwar Australia, including the removal of Aboriginal children and bullying. The final volume, A Distant Land (2012), is set in Jingera, Sydney and Cambodia in 1971 and addresses human rights, civil liberties and war.

Booth's later novels are A Perfect Marriage (2018), The Philosopher's Daughters (2020), The Painting (2021), Bellevue (2023) and Death at Booroomba (2025). A Perfect Marriage concerns domestic violence and its long-term effects. It was highly commended in the 2019 ACT Writing and Publishing Awards, while The Philosopher's Daughters was highly commended in the 2022 ACT Notables Awards. The Philosopher's Daughters explores race and gender in nineteenth-century Australia, while The Painting examines the migration experience through an art-theft mystery.

Booth's seventh novel, Bellevue (2023), is set in the Blue Mountains in 1972 and was described by Region Canberra as combining social commentary with elements of a psychological thriller. Her eighth novel, Death at Booroomba (2025), was published under the name A L Booth by Ventura Press. The historical murder mystery is set in postwar rural Australia and explores war trauma, prejudice and parochialism.

Selected honours and awards

Personal life

Booth is married and has two daughters.

Select bibliography

Books

  • Booth, Alison L. (1995). The Economics of the Trade Union. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-46839-8.
  • Booth, Alison L.; Snower, Dennis J. (1996). Acquiring Skills: Market Failures, Their Symptoms, and Policy Responses. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-47957-8.
  • Booth, Alison L. (2026). Uneven Rewards: Milestones in Labour Economics. Australian National University Press. ISBN 978-1-76046-729-6.

Articles

Novels

References

  1. 1 2 Alexander, Nicole. "Alison Booth – Stepping Between Worlds". Nicole Alexander.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Hunter, Boyd (2014). "Conversations with Eminent Labour Economists: Alison Booth". Australian Journal of Labour Economics. 17: 5–14.
  3. ↑ "Emeritus Professors". Services. Australian National University.
  4. 1 2 "Alison Booth". Research School of Economics. Australian National University.
  5. ↑ "Emeritus Prof Alison Booth made founding fellow of the EALE". Australian National University. Archived from the original on 20 December 2016. Retrieved 3 December 2016.
  6. 1 2 "Citation for Distinguished Fellow Award 2017: Professor Alison Booth" (PDF). Economic Society of Australia. 2017.
  7. ↑ "Volume Information". The Economic Journal. 111 (474). Royal Economic Society: i–xxii. October 2001. JSTOR 798406.
  8. ↑ "2019 Election of Fellows to the Econometric Society". Econometrica. 88 (3): 1299–1303. 2020. doi:10.3982/ECTA883EF.
  9. ↑ "Alison Booth". Economic Society of Australia. Retrieved 27 July 2021.
  10. 1 2 "Uneven Rewards: Milestones in Labour Economics". ANU Press. May 2026.
  11. ↑ Booth, Alison L.; Nolen, Patrick (February 2012). "Gender Differences in Risk Behaviour: Does Nurture Matter?". The Economic Journal. 122 (558): F56–F78. doi:10.1111/j.1468-0297.2011.02480.x.
  12. ↑ "Why some people are more cautious with their finances than others". The Economist. 25 January 2014. Retrieved 3 December 2016.
  13. ↑ "Australian National University researcher Alison Booth states women take more career risks when among women". The Daily Telegraph. 29 November 2011. Retrieved 3 December 2016.
  14. ↑ Booth, Alison; Fan, Elliott; Meng, Xin; Zhang, Dandan (February 2019). "Gender Differences in Willingness to Compete: The Role of Culture and Institutions". The Economic Journal. 129 (618): 734–764. doi:10.1111/ecoj.12583.
  15. ↑ Booth, Alison; Yamamura, Eiji (October 2018). "Performance in Mixed-Sex and Single-Sex Competitions: What We Can Learn from Speedboat Races in Japan". The Review of Economics and Statistics. 100 (4): 581–593. doi:10.1162/rest_a_00715. hdl:1885/161049.
  16. ↑ Booth, Alison; Lee, Jungmin (July 2021). "Girls' and boys' performance in competitions: What we can learn from a Korean quiz show". Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization. 187: 431–447. doi:10.1016/j.jebo.2021.04.031.
  17. ↑ Booth, Alison L.; Meng, Xin; Fan, Elliott; Zhang, Dandan (August 2022). "The direct and intergenerational behavioural consequences of a socio-political upheaval". Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization. 200: 931–958. doi:10.1016/j.jebo.2022.06.033.
  18. ↑ Meng, Xin; Booth, Alison (25 March 2019). "The impact of within-group conflict on trust and trustworthiness". VoxEU. Centre for Economic Policy Research.
  19. ↑ Booth, Alison L.; Freeman, Richard B.; Meng, Xin; Zhang, Jilu (August 2022). "Trade Unions and the Welfare of Rural-Urban Migrant Workers in China". ILR Review. 75 (4): 974–1000. doi:10.1177/00197939211004440.
  20. ↑ Meng, Xin; Zhang, Jilu; Booth, Alison (13 December 2020). "Trade unionism and the welfare of rural-urban migrant workers in China". VoxEU. Centre for Economic Policy Research.
  21. ↑ Booth, Alison L.; Leigh, Andrew; Varganova, Elena (August 2012). "Does Ethnic Discrimination Vary Across Minority Groups? Evidence from a Field Experiment". Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics. 74 (4): 547–573. doi:10.1111/j.1468-0084.2011.00664.x.
  22. ↑ Wahlquist, Calla (23 May 2016). "Race watchdog hails blind recruiting trial to overcome bias". The Guardian.
  23. 1 2 "Author Talk: Alison Booth presents 'Death at Booroomba'". Randwick City Library. Randwick City Council. Retrieved 20 September 2026.
  24. 1 2 "Crafting crime fiction: when economics and creative writing collide". ANU Reporter. Australian National University. 2026. Retrieved 20 September 2026.
  25. ↑ Clarke, Lucy (3 January 2010). "Up the Creek in Australia of Old". The Sunday Telegraph.
  26. ↑ "ACT Book of the Year: 2011". Libraries ACT. ACT Government. Retrieved 20 September 2026.
  27. ↑ Fraser, Alison (July 2011). "Meet Alison Booth, professor of economics – and novelist". Reader's Digest. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 15 January 2015.
  28. ↑ Clark, Blanche (22 January 2011). "Under the Milky Way". Herald Sun.
  29. ↑ Goldsworthy, Kerryn (12 April 2018). "A Perfect Marriage review: Alison Booth's story of domestic abuse". The Sydney Morning Herald.
  30. ↑ "Gentle outback drama with heart". The Canberra Times. 15 August 2020.
  31. ↑ "An affecting art-theft mystery". The Canberra Times. 24 July 2021.
  32. ↑ Robinson, Barbie (5 March 2023). "The Canberra Bookshelf: nostalgic yearning for things lost and found". Region Canberra. Retrieved 20 September 2026.
  33. ↑ Briggs, Katy (3 June 2025). "Death at Booroomba (AL Booth, Ventura Press)". Books+Publishing. Retrieved 20 September 2026.
  34. ↑ "Fellows". The Econometric Society. Retrieved 20 September 2026.
  35. ↑ "Citation for Distinguished Fellow Award 2017: Professor Alison Booth" (PDF). Economic Society of Australia. 2017. Retrieved 20 September 2026.
  36. ↑ "People". European Association of Labour Economists. Retrieved 20 September 2026.
  37. ↑ "Emeritus Prof Alison Booth made founding fellow of the EALE". Australian National University. Archived from the original on 20 December 2016. Retrieved 3 December 2016.
  38. ↑ "Fellows Directory". Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia. Retrieved 20 September 2026.
  39. ↑ Houston, Diane M., ed. (2005). Work-Life Balance in the 21st Century. Palgrave Macmillan. p. xii. doi:10.1057/9780230373594. ISBN 978-1-4039-2062-1.
  40. ↑ Booth, Alison. The Philosopher's Daughters.
  41. ↑ Booth, Alison. The Painting.