Biography
Christopher L. Foote, a Senior Economist and Policy Advisor in the Research Department at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, currently serves as Acting Director of the Center for Behavioral Economics and Decisionmaking. He graduated from the College of William and Mary in 1987, and then worked for two years as a newspaper reporter in Harrisonburg, Virginia. He received an economics Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 1996. From 1996 to 2002, Mr. Foote taught at Harvard University’s department of economics, where he also served as director of undergraduate studies. In July 2002, he accepted a position as senior staff economist with the Council of Economic Advisers, becoming chief economist at the CEA in February 2003. From May 2003 to September 2003, he served as an economic adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad, Iraq, returning briefly to Iraq in January and February of 2004. He joined the Boston Fed in October 2003.

Education

Ph.D., macroeconomics and political economy, University of Michigan, 1996

Regents (U-M Graduate School) Fellowship
Rackham (U-M Graduate School) Predoctoral Fellowship
Alfred P. Sloan Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship

 

B.A., College of William and Mary, 1987

Work experience

Federal Reserve Bank of Boston

Senior Economist and Policy Advisor, 2007-
Senior Economist, 2003-2006

 

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Business

Visiting Associate Professor of Economics, Spring 2004; Spring 2005; Spring 2006

 

Coalition Provisional Authority, Baghdad, Iraq

Economist, May 2003-Sept. 2003; Jan. 2004-Feb. 2004

 

Council of Economic Advisers

Chief Economist, Feb. 2003-May 2003
Senior Staff Economist, July 2002-Jan. 2003; Sept 2003

Staff Economist, July 1994-June 1995

 

Harvard University, Department of Economics

Lecturer on Economics, 2003-
Assistant and Associate Professor, 1996-2002

Associate Director of Undergraduate Studies, 2002
Director of Undergraduate Studies, 1998-2001

 

Department of Economics, University of Michigan

Various teaching and research positions during graduate school,
1991-1994

Publications

Refereed journal articles

"Just the Facts: An Initital Analysis of the Subprime Crisis," with Kristopher Gerardi, Lorenz Goette, and Paul Willen. Journal of Housing Economics, forthcoming.

"Negative Equity and Foreclosure: Theory and Evidence," with Kristopher Gerardi and Paul Willen. Journal of Urban Economics, forthcoming.

“The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime: Comment,” with Christopher F. Goetz. Quarterly Journal of Economics. (123):1 (February 2008)

“Economic Prospects and Policy in Iraq,” with William Block, Keith Crane, and Simon Gray. Journal of Economic Perspectives. 18(3). (Summer 2004): 47-70.

“Arbitraging a Discriminatory Labor Market: Black Workers at the Ford Motor Co., 1918-1947,” with Warren Whatley and Gavin Wright. Journal of Labor Economics. 21(3). (August 2003): 493-532.

“Trend Employment Growth and the Bunching of Job Creation and Destruction.” Quarterly Journal of Economics. 113(3). (August 1998): 809-834.

Other journal articles

Comment on “Volatility and Dispersion in Business Growth Rates: Publicly Traded and Privately Held Firms,” by S. Davis, J. Haltiwanger, R. Jarmin, and J. Miranda, NBER Macroeconomics Annual. (2006).

“Testing the (S,s) Model,” with John Leahy and Erik Hurst. American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings. 90(2). (May 2000): 116-119.

Comment on “Contract-Theoretic Approaches to Wages and Displacement,” by W. J. den Haan, G. Ramey, and J. Watson, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Review. (May/June 1999).

Working papers and other unpublished papers

"Negative Equity and Foreclosure: Theory and Evidence," with Kristopher Gerardi and Paul S. Willen. FRB Boston Public Policy Discussion Papers Series, paper no. 08-3. (2008)

"Subprime Facts: What (We Think) We Know about the Subprime Crises and What We Don't," with Kristopher Gerardi, Lorenz Goette and Paul S. Willen. FRB Boston Public Policy Discussion Papers Series, paper no. 08-2 (2008).

“Space and Time in Macroeconomic Panel Data: Young Workers and State-Level Unemployment Revisited.” FRB Boston Working Papers Series, paper no. 07-10 (2007).

“The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime: Comment,” with Christopher F. Goetz. FRB Boston Working Papers Series, paper no. 05-15 (2005). [Originally posted as “Testing Economic Hypotheses with State-Level Data: A Comment on Donohue and Levitt (2001)”]
(Revised in January 2008).

“Economic Prospects and Policy in Iraq,” with William Block, Keith Crane, and Simon Gray. FRB Boston Public Policy Discussion Papers Series, paper no. 04-1 (2004).

Book reviews

Review of Economic Turbulence: Is a Volatile Economy Good for America? by C. Brown, J. Haltiwanger and J. Lane, Journal of Economic Literature (June 2008).

Review of Coping with Recession: UK Company Performance in Adversity, by P.A. Geroski and P. Gregg, Journal of Economic Literature (June 2000).

Review of Dual Labor Markets: A Macroeconomic Perspective, by G. Saint-Paul, Journal of Economic Literature. (September 1998).

Public service

Editor, Berkeley Electronic Journal of Macroeconomics

Referee: American Economic Review, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Journal of Political Economy, Econometrica, Journal of Labor Economics, Review of Economics and Statistics, Economics Letters, Berkeley Electronic Journal of Macroeconomics, Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Southern Economic Journal, Social Policy, American Law and Economics Review, Food Policy