Nowadays, there is a famous quote:”Everyone wants to be Angelababy”. I still remember the first advice of our ex-dean, Prof Norma Mansor when I just newly entered into FEA: “For the not-so-pretty ones, you have to work harder than others”. Well, life is unfair.
Judging from my 22-year old life experience, there is no evidence that can disprove my old belief. When I work as a sales assistant in a famous boutique, male customers will usually be more polite to pretty staffs. When I work as a fragrance promoter, male customers will be more willing to listen when they were approached by pretty promoter. When I work as a takaful agent, the same thing happens again. The truth is their skills were not really better than the uglier ones. But, at least they earn more selling opportunities than the uglier ones.
Judging from my 22-year old life experience, there is no evidence that can disprove my old belief. When I work as a sales assistant in a famous boutique, male customers will usually be more polite to pretty staffs. When I work as a fragrance promoter, male customers will be more willing to listen when they were approached by pretty promoter. When I work as a takaful agent, the same thing happens again. The truth is their skills were not really better than the uglier ones. But, at least they earn more selling opportunities than the uglier ones.
Needless to say, there are many privileges of being beautiful. Even economists have long recognized that physical beauty affects wages, even in occupations where appearance does not seem relevant to job performance. It seems that attractive men and women are paid more than ordinary people for the same work. The question is why. Maybe Mankiw had already given some answer for us.
From Greg Mankiw’s blog:
The Beauty Premium
My Principles textbook has a case study on the economic benefits of being beautiful (in the chapter Earnings and Discrimination). In NY Times, economist Hal Varian has an article in the Business section describing new research on the topic by Markus Mobius of the Harvard economics department and Tanya Rosenblat of Wesleyan University. The research is based on experiments in which some people are asked to hire other people to perform certain tasks. Two conclusions:
1. Employers thought beautiful people were more productive even when their only interaction was via a telephone interview. It appears that the confidence that beautiful people have in themselves comes across over the phone as well as in person.
2. Employers (wrongly) expect good-looking workers to perform better than their less-attractive counterparts under both visual and oral interaction, even after controlling for individual worker characteristics and worker confidence.
These results suggest that the beauty premium is not entirely rational on the part of employers. What say you?
The Beauty Premium
My Principles textbook has a case study on the economic benefits of being beautiful (in the chapter Earnings and Discrimination). In NY Times, economist Hal Varian has an article in the Business section describing new research on the topic by Markus Mobius of the Harvard economics department and Tanya Rosenblat of Wesleyan University. The research is based on experiments in which some people are asked to hire other people to perform certain tasks. Two conclusions:
1. Employers thought beautiful people were more productive even when their only interaction was via a telephone interview. It appears that the confidence that beautiful people have in themselves comes across over the phone as well as in person.
2. Employers (wrongly) expect good-looking workers to perform better than their less-attractive counterparts under both visual and oral interaction, even after controlling for individual worker characteristics and worker confidence.
These results suggest that the beauty premium is not entirely rational on the part of employers. What say you?
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