Forskningen om skönhetens betydelse befinner sig i ett expansivt skede. Att skönhet ger högre lön på arbetsmarknaden och fler röster i politiska val har visats förut; den nya studien ”Hot or Not: How Appearance Affects Earnings and Productivity in Academia” undersöker om utseendet är av någon betydelse i akademins värld. Det är det, även där:

In this paper we examine the impact of a professor’s hotness, as rated by students, on his or her salary, controlling for research and teaching productivity. We also estimate the impacts of a professor’s hotness on the quality of his or her teaching, as evaluated by students, and the impact of hotness on research productivity, as measured by citations, publications, co-authorship, and grant funding. Our study is based on data describing economics professors at sixteen universities. Although a relatively small proportion of our sample is rated “hot” by students, hotness generates, for some, a significant earnings premium, even with comprehensive controls for productivity. We find a strong relationship between hotness and teaching productivity, but a much weaker relationship between hotness and research productivity. The unique contribution of this paper is the use of data on actual productivity, which is generally unavailable in papers assessing the returns to appearance.

Att skönhet inte påverkar om man är mer framgångsrik i forskningen förvånar mig inte, bl.a. eftersom den vetenskapliga processen (med publikationer) i hög grad bygger på anonymitet; inte heller att man blir mer uppskattad som lärare om man ser bra ut. Om man bl.a. kontrollerar för produktivitet, hur mycket mer tjänar heta manliga professorer (effekten är inte säkerställd för kvinnliga)?

The effect of hotness on salary is, for our sample as a whole, always positive. Once controls for differences between universities, changes over time and productivity are added, the effects are both economically and statistically significant. In the specification with the best fit, Case 5, the coefficient on appearance ($12,957) is somewhat larger than earnings premium enjoyed by full professors over associates ($9,626, s.e. $2,598) and similar in size to the male earnings premium ($11,423, s.e. $3296). To put this number into perspective, bear in mind that, conditional upon earning $100,000 or more, the average salary in our sample is $127,017, so our highest estimates of the effects of hotness on earnings are approximately 10 percent of the average observed salary.

En ganska betydande effekt på lönen, alltså. Åt den som har skall varda givet.