Economics of Wage Inequality in Agriculture

Economics of Wage Inequality in Agriculture

Faculty Lead(s): Chian Jones Ritten

Women are continually becoming more prevalent in Wyoming’s agricultural sector. Yet, women-owned operations in Wyoming report lower earnings than similar men-owned operations. Additionally, Wyoming women who work in the agricultural industry, but may not own the operation, have lower wages than men in the industry. One potential reason for these gender gaps is differences in how women and men negotiate over wages and the selling of their products.

Our research group has found that women negotiate for lower profit during the sale of their product. In this project, we propose to use laboratory experiments to understand how gender differences in wage negotiations can help explain the wage differences seen in Wyoming’s agricultural sector.  The graduate assistant working on this project would gain experience in experimental economics methods, data collection and analysis, and econometric modeling.