Alison L Booth

Alison L Booth is Emeritus Professor of Economics at The Australian National University. She is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia, a Fellow of the Econometric Society, a Founding Fellow of the European Association of Labour Economists, and recipient of the Distinguished Fellow Award from the Economic Society of Australia. While her research interests broadly span labour economics and experimental economics, she is also interested in cultural influences on economic preferences and their impact on economic outcomes, the economics of gender, and imperfect competition and the labour market. Booth is also a distinguished novelist whose literary works often reflect her academic expertise, exploring themes of social and economic dynamics through richly developed characters and intricate plots.

Uneven Rewards »

Milestones in Labour Economics

Authored by: Alison L Booth

Publication date: 2026

Uneven Rewards brings together major studies of workplace relations and behaviour from the distinguished labour economist Alison L Booth. Over more than three decades, Booth has forged a distinctive intellectual path combining a strong interest in the role of gender and culture on labour markets with acute expertise in data collection, and cognate social science fields and methods. With her co-authors, Booth examines the effects on men and women of evolving industrial relations’ rules and contexts. She studies the changing gendered and culturally-specific nature of labour markets, and analyses the findings of a set of data-rich social experiments to reveal insights about women’s and men’s behaviour in labour, educational and wider social settings. Finally, Booth shares new conclusions arising from this extensive body of research. She shows how culture and nurture associated with the upbringing of boys and girls can have profound implications for educational and labour market performance and relative outcomes by gender: There is no right or wrong place for young women and men to be. What matters is that they are given the opportunity to go where their talents lead them without being thwarted by cultural pressures.

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