Christopher Boone

About

Christopher Boone is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he has been faculty since 2020. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Columbia University, earned in 2015, and has a background in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Cornell University, where he obtained both his B.S. in 2005 and M.S. in 2009. Boone's research interests primarily focus on labor market policy, economic history, and agriculture, with particular areas of specialization including inequality, technological change, and economic crises. His work explores various aspects of economic policy and labor dynamics, contributing to the understanding of unemployment insurance, tipping behaviors, and the political economy of discretionary spending. Boone has also engaged in teaching courses related to microeconomics and the modern service economy, earning teaching awards at Cornell University.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Business
• Engineering
• Macroeconomics
• Marketing
• Psychology
• Economics
• Labour economics
• Economic growth
• Geography

Selected publications

• Unemployment Insurance Generosity and Aggregate Employment

  American Economic Journal Economic Policy · 2021-04-30 · 25 citations

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This paper examines the impact of unemployment insurance (UI) on aggregate employment by exploiting cross-state variation in the maximum benefit duration during the Great Recession. Comparing adjacent counties located in neighboring states, there is no statistically significant impact of increasing UI generosity on aggregate employment. Point estimates are uniformly small in magnitude, and the most precise estimates rule out employment-to-population ratio reductions in excess of 0.35 percentage…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Structural Change and Internal Labor Migration: Evidence from the Great Depression

  The Review of Economics and Statistics · 2021 · 11 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract We analyze sectoral labor reallocation and the reversal of urbanization in the United States during the Great Depression. The widespread movement to farms, which serves as a form of migratory insurance during the crisis, is largely toward farms with low levels of mechanization. In contrast, the mechanized agricultural sector sheds workers, many of whom reallocate into low-productivity or subsistence farming. The crisis perverts the normal process of structural change in which workers di…

  PublisherDOI

• Have Minimum Wage Increases Hurt the Restaurant Industry? The Evidence Says No!

  Cornell Peter and Stephanie Nolan School of Hotel Administration (Cornell University) · 2015-01-01 · 7 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Federal, state, and local laws in the U.S. specify the minimum wages to be paid in their jurisdictions. Recent years have seen an increased interest among many in raising those minimum wages, and there has been some movement at the local, state, and federal levels to do so.1 Proposals to increase the minimum wages have been opposed by the restaurant industry on the grounds that such increases would require restaurants to cut hiring, raise prices, or both.2 Either reaction is thought to reduce cu…

  Publisher

• Farm Mechanization and Rural Migration in the Great Depression

  Cornell Peter and Stephanie Nolan School of Hotel Administration (Cornell University) · 2019-01-01 · 5 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  We study sectoral labor realloaction in the U.S. during the Great Depression by examining transitions between the farm and nonfarm sectors as well as movement within the farm sector. Towns and cities that are hit harder by the downturn see higher levels of out-migration to farms, suggesting that the widespread movement to farms serves as a source of migratory insurance. We also show that the more mechanized farming areas are far less able to provide this insurance function. In fact, while the su…

  Publisher

• Replication data for: Structural Change and Internal Labor Migration: Evidence from the Great Depression

  Harvard Dataverse · 2021-08-29

  datasetOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Boone, C. D. A., and Wilse-Samson, L. (2023). “Structural Change and Internal Labor Migration: Evidence from the Great Depression.” Review of Economics and Statistics 105:4, 962–981.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Ethan Kaplan

  5 shared

• Arindrajit Dubé

  5 shared

• Lucas Goodman

  4 shared

• Laurence Wilse-Samson

  Columbia University

  4 shared

• David E. Sahn

  2 shared

• Michael Lynn

  2 shared

• Jong-Hwa Ham

  Korea Rural Economic Institute

  1 shared

• Joseph Park

  Scripps Institution of Oceanography

  1 shared

Awards & honors

• SHA Faculty Teaching Award, Cornell University, 2018–2019
• SHA Faculty Teaching Award, Cornell University, 2015–2016
• Center for the Study of Inequality Faculty Research Grant, C…
• Smith Family Business Institute Research Pioneer Fund Award,…
• ISS Small Grant, Cornell University, 2017

Similar researchers at University of Massachusetts Amherst

• Juan-Camilo Cárdenash-41
• Lawrence Kingh-40
• Gerald Epsteinh-31