Rachel Croson

Rachel Toni Algaze Croson is an economist currently serving as Executive Vice President and Provost of the University of Minnesota.^[1][2] Until March 2020, she served as Dean of the College of Social Science and MSU Foundation Professor of Economics at Michigan State University. She studies bargaining and negotiation as well as public goods provision, and uses experimental approaches to study management. She is known for her mentorship and advice to women in the economics profession, and was the 2017 winner of the Carolyn Shaw Bell Award from the Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession.^[3][4]

She previously served as Dean of the School of Business at the University of Texas at Arlington; Professor of Economics in the School of Economics, Political and Policy Sciences, Professor of Organizations, Strategy, and International Management, and director of the Negotiations Center at the University of Texas at Dallas. Croson has also served on the board of the Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession, where she was pivotal in developing the mentoring workshops aimed at female junior faculty. She was also an associate professor in the Department of Operations and Information Management at the Wharton School and a member of the Psychology Graduate Group of the University of Pennsylvania, and as a division director for Social and Economic Sciences at the National Science Foundation.^[5][6]

Research[]

Her research focuses on bargaining and negotiation^[7] as well as public goods provision, and uses experimental approaches to study management. She has served on the Editorial Boards of the American Economic Review, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Journal of International Business Studies, and Decision and Risk Analysis. Her papers on gender differences in economic behavior have been cited thousands of times. Based on her research, she offers the following advice on negotiation (particularly for women):

Successful negotiation is all about win-win (or what negotiation scholars call integrative solutions). To find win-win solutions, you need to move beyond the parties’ positions (what they say they want) to uncover their underlying interests (what they really want to achieve). This is not easy to do, but if done successfully it can be enormously impactful.

I have two general pieces of negotiation advice. The first is to make promises, not threats. A threat would be “if you can’t match the salary, I’m going to take that other job offer.” A promise would be “if you can match that salary, I will sign a new agreement today.” Promises are framed positively rather than negatively, so they are easier for your negotiating partner to agree to. And they leave you strategic flexibility; if they can’t match the salary you can still sign tomorrow.

The second is to be honest. One should not explicitly lie in negotiations (it invites a lawsuit for fraud). But one should also avoid deception, which may not be fraudulent but is nonetheless unethical. The truth surfaces eventually, and any advantage you may get from deception in the short term is far outweighed by the costs of damage to your reputation in the long term.

— Rachel Croson, "Q & A Interview: Dr. Rachel Croson, Dean of the College of Business, UT Arlington"^[8]

Selected works[]

• Rachel Croson and Uri Gneezy (2009). "Gender differences in preferences". Journal of Economic Literature. 47 (2): 448–474. doi:10.1257/jel.47.2.448.CS1 maint: uses authors parameter (link)
• R Croson, N Buchan (1999). "Gender and culture: International experimental evidence from trust games". The American Economic Review. 89 (2): 386–391. doi:10.1257/aer.89.2.386.CS1 maint: uses authors parameter (link)
• RTA Croson (2007). "Theories of commitment, altruism and reciprocity: evidence from linear public goods games". Economic Inquiry. 45 (2): 199–216. doi:10.1111/j.1465-7295.2006.00006.x. S2CID 154373939.CS1 maint: uses authors parameter (link)
• R Croson, K Donohue (2006). "Behavioral causes of the bullwhip effect and the observed value of inventory information". Management Science. 52 (3): 323–336. doi:10.1287/mnsc.1050.0436.CS1 maint: uses authors parameter (link)
• "Income and Wealth Heterogeneity in the Voluntary Provision of Linear Public Goods." (with Ted Buckley) Journal of Public Economics, Vol 90, 2006, pp. 935–955.
• "A Field Experiment in Charitable Contribution: The Impact of Social Information on the Voluntary Provision of Public Goods." (with Jen Shang). The Economic Journal, Vol 119, 2009, pp. 1422–1439.
• "One Bad Apple: Uncertainty and Heterogeneity in Public Goods Provision." (with Angela de Oliveira and Catherine Eckel). Experimental Economics, Vol 18, 2015, pp. 116–135.

References[]