Gordon Wagner (economist)

Gordon Eric Wagner is an American economist and member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) who worked in the 1970s and 1980s to apply LDS cooperative principles to agricultural development in Africa.

Wagner received an M.S. from Brigham Young University (BYU) in 1966 and a Ph.D. in economics from Cornell University in 1977, writing his dissertation on social and economic cooperation.

In the 1960s, Wagner was a Professor of economics at BYU, and was one of several faculty investigated by university administration and student informants to evaluate their socialist and communist leanings. In the 1970s, he was a professor of economics at Wells College in Aurora, New York and also participated in the Committee on Mormon Society and Culture (supported by BYU's Anthropology Department).

Later, in the 1990s, Wagner worked as consultant for USAID in Uganda.

Sources

• Lightplanet article on Mormons and Agriculture, taken from Encyclopedia of Mormonism article on "Agriculture"
• T. Allen Lambert. "Zion Building: Writing About it and Doing It," FARMS Review, Vol. 9, Issue 2.