Catherine Ashcraft

Catherine is studying transboundary environmental cooperation efforts, particularly negotiation as it concerns the joint management of international waterways such as the Danube and the Nile. Her research will examine the internal and external factors that affect innovation and entrepreneurship in ongoing transboundary river basin negotiation processes. Because most negotiations and institutional characteristics are non-quantitative in nature, Catherine's primary source of data will be semi-structured interviews with key informants in the Nile and Danube River basins.

Catherine attended the University of Pennsylvania where she received a B.A. in Biology and Philosophy of Science. She received a Masters in Environmental Science at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. Catherine is also a founder of the PON Student Interest Group on Transboundary Water Management.

Daniel J. Benjamin

Dan's dissertation work, Fairness: From The Laboratory Into The Market, formulates a theory of transactional fairness preferences that explains how people behave in simple bargaining experiments in the laboratory. He applies this theory to explain a wide variety of empirical regularities about negotiation outcomes in labor markets. In addition to explaining negotiation behavior, the theory has normative implications for how negotiators can advantageously frame possible agreements.

Dolly Chugh

Dolly is a graduate student in the joint Ph.D. program in Organizational Behavior and Social Psychology at Harvard University / Harvard Business School, and is a member of the Implicit Social Cognition laboratory in the Psychology department (known as the Banaji Lab). Dolly uses the experimental methods of psychology to study questions of organizational and managerial interest. Her current research focuses on the ethical and organizational implications of unintentional bias (such as implicit racial bias).

She graduated from Cornell University with a double major in Psychology and Economics and from the Harvard Business School with an MBA.

Mara Hernandez

Mara's dissertation work focuses on the effect of negotiation processes on notions of fairness. Previous research has found that egocentric notions of fairness that stem from biased perceptions of reality constitute a major obstacle for conflict resolution and may lead to impasse in a number of different settings. In her earlier work, Mara found that face-to-face negotiation may lead to the reduction of egocentrism as parties converge to shared notions of fairness. She is now investigating the conditions and mechanism that allow such convergence and reduce the negative effects of egocentrism.

Mara has also pioneered teaching negotiations and conflict resolution in Mexico, where she sees the development of these skills as central to strengthening democratic values and citizenship. She holds a Master in Public Administration from the Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and a B.A. in Economics.

Yuval Procaccia

Yuval's dissertation, Optimal Legal Enforcement of Precontractual Commitments, uses an economic framework to explain how enforceable precontractual promises can be designed to solve the holdup problem, while generating both optimal investment and optimal trade. It then proceeds to examine alternative legal methods of enforcement, analyzing the impact of various remedy measures on the parties' incentives to promise, invest, and trade.

Yuval received his B.A. and M.A. in economics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and his LL.M. at Harvard Law School. He also clerked at the Supreme Court of Israel and worked as a Legal Assistant in the Israeli legislature.