Linda Babcock

Progress Founder and James M. Walton Professor of Economics

Linda C. Babcock is the James M. Walton Professor of Economics and the former Acting Dean at Carnegie Mellon University's H. John Heinz III College's School of Public Policy and Management. Dr. Babcock's degrees include a BA in Economics from the University of California at Irvine and an MA and Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. She has received numerous research grants from the National Science Foundation and has been a visiting professor at the University of Chicago's Graduate School of Business, the Harvard Business School, and the California Institute of Technology. In 1991 and 2001 she received the Heinz School's award for teaching excellence.

Dr. Babcock's research is conducted at the interface between economics and psychology. Her focus is the area of negotiations and dispute resolution. Her research has appeared in the most prestigious economics, industrial relations, and law journals, including the American Economic Review, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, The Journal of Economic Perspectives, Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Industrial Relations, and the Journal of Legal Studies. Her recent work focuses on gender differences in the propensity to initiate negotiations and on how people react to women when they do negotiate.

In her recent book with Sara Laschever, "Women Don't Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide" she describes her research on initiating negotiations and explores the societal factors that hold women back from asking for what they want. Her research on women and negotiations has been discussed in hundreds of newspapers and magazines in the U.S. and abroad and she has appeared on numerous television and radio stations discussing her work. She provides negotiation expertise to numerous public sector, not-for-profit organizations, and private sector organizations.