An active-learning exercise on learning negotiation as a way to mitigate the gender wage gap for introductory microeconomics

Economic research provides several reasons to explain why the gender wage gap still persists. One reason is the negotiation gap, whereby women are less likely to use and benefit from negotiation compared to men. This paper describes an active-learning exercise in which students are empowered to learn and practice basic negotiation strategy in a distributive bargaining framework. Students actively participate in brainstorming, small group discussion, role play, and reflection. Although designed for use in an introductory microeconomics course, the exercise could also be used in a labor or gender economics course.