The overall topic in a very broad manner is the gender wage gap, and more specifically, the 0.77 dollars that women earn for every dollar men earn.  The question to be addressed is, what factors contribute to the wage gap between men and women?  My interest in this question comes partially from hearing the issue discussed in both a political setting on television and in a classroom setting in economics.  I received largely conflicting points of view from the two, because the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, which I have heard discussed on the news, gives gender based discrimination as the reason for the gender wage gap.  Economics on the other hand would give differences in marginal utility and hours worked as the reason for the wage gap.  The research gave me an interesting perspective on the issue because once I starting researching from an economic point of view, thinking beyond the issue of discrimination, I began looking to feminist and gender studies works that discuss differences between men and women in society that lead to differences in time spent in the workplace.  I don't have any personal experience regarding this issue, but I think I am qualified to write about it because of the research I will do and have done so far.

Three Sources

"Lilly Ledbetter Re-reconsidered" is an article from the Mises institute.  Its main claim is that in an economy, wages tend to reflect marginal utility.  Over time, and especially in the case of a large company, this should be further manifested because of an established pay structure and a pre-existing awareness that good employees will leave for other jobs if they aren't paid a market rate.  Essentially, if Lilly Ledbetter was as underpaid as she claimed, she should have been able to find another job that would pay her more.  Since she did not, it is assumed that her employer was her best option and was paying her a fair wage in an economic sense.  The article also condemns legislative solutions to this perceived problem and warns of unintended consequences that can result from tampering too much in the labor market.  The author holds a PhD in Economics, so he is well versed in the field and in my opinion qualified to hold an opinion on the subject.  The author is a conservative economist, so his bias against a law and a concept that go against conservative economic principles is obvious.


This article focuses on the topic of gender pay gap, and begins with the assertion that employers do not pay women less than men for equally valuable work.  The article elaborates on an economic example in which a business pays women 40 dollars an hour and gains 50 dollars in benefit for each woman and another business that pays its women 41 dollars per hour and gains 50 dollars in benefit for each woman.  The result would be that the female employees would be hired away from the first firm and move to the second firm.  Assuming that the market for men is already at equilibrium, the two businesses would go back and fourth on hiring the women if they desired to compete in the market until eventually the woman's salary approached he marginally utility like the man's already had.  The point that the author attempts to make is to say that this has already happened in labor markets and is currently happening with men and women as they are hired away for higher wages.  The fact that women earn less must necessarily be due to marginal utility because economic law dictates it and it can be shown through thought experiment.  This article is an example of the kind of topic that I like to find in economics, because it's all about maximizing and minimizing different numbers until equilibrium is reached, which never happens, so adjustment continues.  This goes with the part of the argument that says that marginal utility must be the issue at hand with the gender wage gap because discrimination would quickly make firms that chose to do so uncompetitive.  At stake in this article are a political idea and an economic fallacy.  The major stakeholders are women, economists, employers, and politicians whose careers are at stake.  Robert Higgs is a PhD economist trained at Johns Hopkins and a fellow at the Mises Institute.  He has a bias toward free market economics since that is his background. 


The book is a Treatise on Economics written by economist Ludwig von Mises and originally published in Germany in 1940.  The area of interest in this book is that of wage determination.  The assertion that is made in the section on wages is that in a market setting, the upper bound of wage bids are determined by the expected return that a laborer will bring to an entrepreneur.  The lower bound is whatever the laborer will accept.  This is why it is said that wage rates are determined by the marginal utility of labor.  This relates to the issue at hand because the law asserts that wages in the market are determined by factors other than marginal utility.  Additionally, the only way to determine the actual wages of a worker is by the continual process of bidding on what a laborer has to offer.  There is not a set number on its price just as other inputs in a production process see their prices go up and down.  Ludwig von Mises was a free market economist in Austria during the time of the Nazi takeover, so this book was intended to reach out to the economics profession so that they did not support the anti market policies of Nazi Germany.  The author held a PhD in economics and has been one of the finance ministers for the Austrian government during the time of the Hapsburg Empire.  His bias would be in the direction of free market economics.  It will serve as a background source at the beginning of the paper.  For this book at the time of its publication, the interests at stake were those of economic liberalism and fascism.  In modern times, the interests at stake are those of free market economics and price fixing schemes put into law.  


Logistical Analysis

The argument is that women don't make less than men for the same work as asserted by the Lilly Ledbetter Equal Pay Act of 2009.  It is arguable because it is an economic issue and there is supporting literature in both feminist and free market journals to give evidence that equal work for equal pay is not a problem.  The sources would disagree on whether or not women are being treated fairly, but the free market sources are not completely in disagreement with the feminist sources, which give reasons that gender roles in society affect a woman's life in work and by extension her salary.  In order to address the issue in 2500 words, it needs to be shortened to focusing first on the economics of why equal work for unequal pay isn't possible, and then on the different mechanisms that lead to differences in marginal utility.  I think I'll search for one or two more articles relating to gender studies and women in the workplace.
