Sin taxes could unintentionally make others pay

Non-targeted taxpayers could suffer unforeseen consequences when excise taxes are imposed

Peer-Reviewed Publication

RENSSELAER POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE

When an excise tax hike was levied on cigarettes, New York City taxi drivers who smoked were one and a half times more likely to cheat their customers by overcharging the fare than those who didn’t smoke. That finding comes from forthcoming research in Accounting, Organizations, and Society.

In the first-known study to document that sin taxes can even affect those who aren’t paying them, Thomas Shohfi, an assistant professor in the Lally School of Management at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, examined detailed, ride-level data of the New York City taxicab market. He studied a four-month period in 2009, before and after the federal tax on cigarettes was raised from $0.39 per pack to $1.01.

Shohfi found that so-called sin taxes, or taxes on substances or activities thought to be sinful or harmful like tobacco use, alcohol, or gambling, resulted in a spillover effect where the individuals targeted by the tax hike — cigarette smokers — defrauded other individuals. 

For more information, watch this video.

In this study, after the federal excise tax hike was placed on cigarettes, the taxi drivers who smoked were more likely to charge riders the “out-of-town” rate for rides fully within New York City limits.

“Taxes often have unintended consequences,” Shohfi said. “One of those unintended consequences, especially with excise taxes, is the potential for people to believe the targeted taxes are unfair, to believe someone else should pay for it, and to change their behavior to make others pay for the increased tax.”

The research provided two distinct reasons for this fraudulent behavior. The first is that tax increases generally reduce the buying power of an individual. They have less money and therefore could have more incentive to cheat. The second reason is that when an individual feels they have been unfairly singled out, it becomes easier to rationalize defrauding others, even when the potential victims have nothing to do with the perceived unfair treatment.

“Fraud erodes trust in the market,” Shohfi said. “Our research shows that when you try to dictate behavior through tax policy, there may be important negative unintended consequences that should be considered.”

This research continues Shohfi’s focus on the use of alternative data as sources of creative and untapped information. Previous studies used information gleaned from earnings conference calls to observe corporate managerial behavior, examined the impact of blockholder charitable donations on market reaction, and analyzed the role of personal characteristics in angel investment decisions.

Shohfi was joined in the research — “Do Sin Taxes Spur Cheating in Interpersonal Exchanges?” — by David Kenchington and Roger White, both of Arizona State University, and Jared Smith from North Carolina State University.

---

JOURNAL

Accounting Organizations and Society

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Do Sin Tax Hikes Spur Cheating in Interpersonal Exchange?

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

8-Jul-2021

Disclaimer: AAAS and

SOCIETY BENEFITS FROM REGULATING CAPITALISM

Study: Benefits outweigh risks for autonomous vehicles - if they are regulated

Peer-Reviewed Publication

NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIVERSITY

An interdisciplinary panel of experts has assessed the risks and potential benefits associated with deploying autonomous vehicles (AVs) on U.S. roads and predicts that the benefits will substantially outweigh potential harms – but only if the AVs are well regulated.

“We wanted to assess the potential harms and benefits associated with AVs and determine what the best implementation strategies would be to minimize harms and maximize benefits,” says Veljko Dubljević, first author of the study and an associate professor in the Science, Technology & Society (STS) program at North Carolina State University.

Deploying AVs onto public roads is a complex social issue, which touches on everything from ethics to transportation engineering to artificial intelligence programming.

“And there aren’t many methods for assessing such complex social problems,” Dubljević says. “One approach is to break the large problem down into a collection of more specific questions, assessing different risks and potential benefits separately. This approach is called multi-criteria decision analysis, and it’s what we did here.”

For this study, the researchers outlined four different scenarios for the future of AVs:

• No AVs allowed on public roads;
• AVs are allowed, with no regulations;
• AVs are allowed, but are regulated;
• AVs are regulated and can only be owned by commercial fleet operators.

The researchers then convened a panel of 19 experts with expertise in subjects such as computer science, political science, transportation and ethics.

The researchers also created a list of 13 potential harms and eight potential benefits associated with deploying AVs. The list was developed based on documents from the National Academies and other federal agencies, as well as input from the expert panel convened for the study. Potential harms included assessments of increased risk of accident deaths or cases of injury. Potential benefits included assessments of economic benefits and curtailing environmental impact by reducing traffic jams.

The expert panel then reviewed the four AV deployment scenarios with the goal of determining which scenarios had the best ratio of benefits to harms.

“To assess the potential impact of AV deployment, you have to compare it to a baseline,” says George List, co-author of the study and a professor of civil engineering at NC State. “The baseline was our current state of affairs. And our current state of affairs is that there are a tremendous number of deaths and injuries on U.S. roads.

“While AVs are not perfect, all of our predictions suggest that they will be a step in the right direction. Prohibiting the use of AVs on U.S. roads was the least promising scenario.”

However, the expert panel also highlighted the extent to which government regulations could help reduce risk.

“For example, regulations could limit use of AVs in urban environments and areas with high pedestrian traffic,” Dubljević says. “Either of the regulated scenarios is better than allowing unregulated AVs on the road.”

So, which scenario offered the most benefits and the fewest risks?

“Regulating AV use and limiting ownership to commercial fleet operators is a little more promising than allowing the general public to own and operate their own AVs,” Dubljević says. That’s because fleet ownership makes it more likely that AVs will be properly maintained, software updates will be made on time, and so on.

“We hope that federal, state and local governments use our findings to review whatever regulations they have in place concerning the use of autonomous vehicles – or to develop regulations if there are none on the books,” Dubljević says.

The study, “Toward a Rational and Ethical Sociotechnical System of Autonomous Vehicles: A Novel Application of Multi-criteria Decision Analysis,” is published in PLOS ONE. The paper was co-authored by William Bauer, an associate teaching professor of philosophy at NC State; Munindar P. Singh, Alumni Distinguished Graduate Professor of Computer Science at NC State; Eleni Bardaka, an assistant professor of civil, construction and environmental engineering at NC State; Thomas Birkland, a professor of public administration at NC State; Roger Mayer, a professor of leadership at NC State; M. Shoaib Samandar, a research associate at NC State; Jovan Milojevich of Oklahoma State University; Nirav Ajmeri of the University of Bristol; Charles Edwards of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Ioan Muntean of the University of North Carolina at Asheville; Thomas Powers of the University of Delaware; Hesham Rakha of Virginia Tech; and Vance Ricks of Guilford College.

The work was done with support from the Kenan Institute of Science and Technology and North Carolina State University Research and Innovation.

---

JOURNAL

PLoS ONE

DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0256224 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Content analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Toward a Rational and Ethical Sociotechnical System of Autonomous Vehicles: A Novel Application of Multi-criteria Decision Analysis

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

13-Aug-2021

COI STATEMENT

None.

Using big data to explore the principles of people's online activities globally

What is different or the same about online human connections

Peer-Reviewed Publication

TOYOHASHI UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY (TUT)

 

IMAGE: THE GLOBAL ACTION AREA MAP SHOWS GEOGRAPHICAL DISPARITIES IN THE USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA DESPITE WORLDWIDE UTILIZATION. view more 

CREDIT: COPYRIGHT (C) TOYOHASHI UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Overview:

The research team led by Shiori Hironaka, a project assistant professor of Computer Science and Engineering at Toyohashi University of Technology, collected big data on social media in ten countries and analyzed the relationship between connections and the behaviors of people on the Internet. The researchers found that the users had the same characteristics in follow ratios, which reflect the behaviors of users regardless of country. Discovering common characteristics and differences in data that reflects social diversity may help people effectively use data according to their cultural differences, for instance, for marketing and the effective sharing of information.

Details:

The team collected data on the activities of more than 4,000,000 Twitter users in ten countries (Japan, the U.S.A., Brazil, the U.K., Philippines, Turkey, Indonesia, India, Mexico, and Saudi Arabia) and statistically analyzed the online relationships between the connections and behaviors of users. This is the first analysis of this type of data in the world.

The use of social media data for a diverse array of surveys and analyses is becoming more prevalent as more people use social media. This is because social media data is seen as an indirect observation of social situations. However, the nature of the data varies by country due to cultural differences and other factors, even though the data is similarly observed on social media. User behaviors are believed to reflect the cyberculture of the group the user belongs to. Therefore, it is important to know properties of social media in order to use them in various surveys.

The team analyzed the connections between users, focusing on the nearness of the areas where they act. Because the purposes for using social media may be closely connected with the nearness of the action areas of the users who are connected via social media. To be specific, action areas tend to be close if a social media service is used for exchanges with friends. If the purpose is reading celebrities' posts or news, the nearness of action areas does not matter. Having examined the relationship between the nearness of action areas and user behaviors on social media, we compared the characteristics of different countries.

As a result, we identified ten countries with common points regarding user characteristics related to the nearness of action areas. One characteristic is the follow ratio. It is the ratio of those a user is following to the followers of the user. If the follow ratio is high, it is believed that a user is accessed by people wishing to read the user's posts. We also found that the users with longer profiles tend to be farther from the action areas of the connected users. However, the ten countries do not necessarily have this in common.

Essentially, data on social media connections can express information about users around the world in the same way. However, this may not ensure the expected precision for such functions as friend recommendations and attribute estimations as the nature of the data individually differs due to cultural differences. The identified characteristics are expected to help provide the best information to users of different countries and cultures.

###

Future outlook:

The research team will clarify differences between cultures using social media and identify clues for the creation of a next-generation social media outlet by investigating the nature of big data about social media that is observed on social media.

This research project was sponsored by JPMJMI20B4, a JST-Mirai Program.

Reference:

Shiori Hironaka, Mitsuo Yoshida and Kyoji Umemura (2021).

Cross-Country Analysis of User Profiles for Graph-Based Location Estimation.

IEEE Access, doi: 10.1109/ACCESS.2021.308652.

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9446911

---

JOURNAL

IEEE Access

DOI

10.1109/ACCESS.2021.3086523 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Cross-Country Analysis of User Profiles for Graph-Based Location Estimation

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

3-Jun-2021

Pecan-enriched diet shown to reduce cholesterol

People at risk for cardiovascular disease showed improvements

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA

 

IMAGE: GRADUATE STUDENT LIANA GUARNEIRI, LEFT, AND PROFESSOR JAMIE COOPER. view more 

CREDIT: (PHOTO BY ANDREW DAVIS TUCKER/UGA)

While the proper pronunciation of pecan remains a subject of debate, University of Georgia researchers have shown the tree nut can dramatically improve a person’s cholesterol levels.

Participants at risk for cardiovascular disease who ate pecans during an eight-week intervention showed significant improvements in total cholesterol, triglycerides and low-density lipoprotein (LDL), or “bad” cholesterol, in a study conducted by researchers in the UGA College of Family and Consumer Sciences.

“This dietary intervention, when put in the context of different intervention studies, was extremely successful,” said Jamie Cooper, a professor in the FACS department of nutritional sciences and one of the study’s authors. “We had some people who actually went from having high cholesterol at the start of the study to no longer being in that category after the intervention.”

Researchers saw an average drop of 5% in total cholesterol and between 6% and 9% in LDL among participants who consumed pecans.

For context, researchers referred to a previous meta-analysis of 51 exercise interventions designed to lower cholesterol that reported an average reduction of 1% in total cholesterol and 5% in LDL cholesterol.

“The addition of pecans to the diet not only produced a greater and more consistent reduction in total cholesterol and LDL compared to many other lifestyle interventions, but may also be a more sustainable approach for long-term health,” Cooper said. “Some research shows that even a 1% reduction in LDL is associated with a small reduction of coronary artery disease risk, so these reductions are definitely clinically meaningful.”

Researchers assigned 52 adults between the ages of 30 and 75 who were at higher risk for cardiovascular disease to one of three groups.

One group consumed 68 grams or about 470 calories of pecans a day as part of their regular diet; a second group substituted pecans for a similar amount of calories from their habitual diet, and a control group did not consume pecans.

At eight weeks, participants consumed a high-fat meal to determine changes in blood lipids and the amount of glucose, or sugar, in the blood.

Fasted blood lipids showed similar improvements among the two pecan groups while post-meal triglycerides were reduced in the group that added pecans. Post-meal glucose was lowered in the group that substituted pecans.

“Whether people added them or substituted other foods in the diet for them, we still saw improvements and pretty similar responses in total cholesterol and LDL cholesterol in particular,” said Cooper, who also serves as director of the UGA Obesity Initiative.

Researchers pointed to the known bioactive properties of pecans for possible mechanisms driving the improvements.

Pecans are high in healthy fatty acids and fiber, both of which have been linked to lower cholesterol.

The paper, “Pecan-enriched diets alter cholesterol profiles and triglycerides in adults at-risk for cardiovascular disease in a randomized, controlled trial,” appeared in The Journal of Nutrition and can be viewed here: https://academic.oup.com/jn/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jn/nxab248/6349277

Liana Guarneiri, a doctoral student in the FACS department of nutritional sciences, is first author. Chad Paton, associate professor in FACS who has a joint appointment with the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, also is an author.

 

 

---

JOURNAL

Journal of Nutrition

ARTICLE TITLE

Pecan-enriched diets alter cholesterol profiles and triglycerides in adults at-risk for cardiovascular disease in a randomized, controlled trial

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

12-Aug-2021

Aerosol from a wide range of vaping devices negatively impacted blood vessel function

American Heart Association Basic Cardiovascular Sciences Meeting Report – Presentation: P355; Session: ePosters

Reports and Proceedings

AMERICAN HEART ASSOCIATION

DALLAS, Aug. 23, 2021 — Aerosol generated from vaping devices likely impairs blood vessels’ ability to function comparable to traditional cigarette smoke, according to preliminary research in rats presented at the American Heart Association’s Basic Cardiovascular Sciences Scientific Sessions 2021. The meeting is virtual, Aug. 23-25, and offers the latest research on basic and translational cardiovascular science.

Vaping, or the use of e-cigarettes, is often promoted as a less harmful alternative to smoking traditional cigarettes. E-cigarettes contain a cartridge with a liquid containing nicotine that generates an aerosol that is inhaled, like smoking a cigarette. Despite the popularity of these devices, knowledge is still limited about the impact of the aerosols from e-cigarettes, heated tobacco products and newer, coil-less, ultrasonic vaping devices on cardiovascular function.

“When you inhale a suspension of particles or a mist, whether it is from tobacco or marijuana, whether it’s smoke or aerosol, it all has the same effect,” said Matthew L. Springer, Ph.D., senior author of the study and a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine. “Our research reinforces the previous findings that vaping is not without harm, and it underscores the importance of counseling patients about the risks of vaping because it does affect cardiovascular function.”

Researchers investigated the impact of aerosols generated from a range of vaping devices on the function of the endothelium, which is a thin membrane lining the inside of the heart and blood vessels. The endothelium is a layer of endothelial cells that produce substances that help control blood clotting, blood pressure levels and immune function and help keep blood vessels healthy. Reduced endothelial function usually precedes the development of atherosclerosis, the build-up of fatty material on arteries, and it is often a predictor of a stroke or heart attack.

In this study, a process known as flow-mediated dilation (FMD), an indicator of endothelial function and overall blood vessel health, was measured by ultrasound. FMD was measured in the rats before and after exposure to the aerosols from each of these:

• propylene glycol (PG),
• vegetable glycerin (VG),
• propylene glycol and vegetable glycerin (PGVG),
• 5% nicotine salt pods of three different flavors (Virginia tobacco, mango and menthol),
• an e-cigarette with free-base nicotine (a previous-generation vaping product),
• a “heat-not-burn” tobacco product, and
• a coil-less ultrasonic vaping device.

Combustible cigarette smoke and clean air were the controls for the study. The researchers sought to determine if aerosols from the different vaping products – regardless of flavor, nicotine amount or method of delivery – diminished blood vessel function. They performed a head-to-head comparison on 11 groups of rats with eight rats in each group, exposing the rats to the nine vaping products, as well as the controls of combustible cigarettes and clean air. The rats were exposed to the products during one session consisting of 10 cycles of 5-second inhalation every 30 seconds over a five-minute period. To measure FMD, the femoral artery, a large artery in the thigh, was measured with a micro-ultrasound.

The study found:

• After only one five-minute session of exposure, endothelial function in the rats was acutely impaired by aerosols from all vaping products. Vessel dilation fell between 40% and 67% for all groups except the rats exposed to the clean air.  
• This blood vessel impairment in vaping products was comparable to the impairment caused by traditional cigarettes (67%).  

The researchers also collected blood from the rats to measure nicotine concentration. They found that the blood-nicotine concentration was 8.7 times higher in the rats exposed to the heated tobacco product (average of 61.4 ng/ml) than in the rats exposed to the ultrasonic vaping device (average of 7.0 ng/ml) and 7.3 times higher than the previous generation of e-cigarette (average of 8.4 ng/ml).

“We were not surprised when we saw the results for the heated tobacco products and previous generation e-cigarettes, however, we were somewhat surprised to discover that the new ultrasonic vaping device also impaired flow-mediated dilation,” said study lead author Poonam Rao, M.D., a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education at the University of California, San Francisco. “This new ultrasonic device has no heating coil, so theoretically it should be safer than e-cigarettes. Yet even without the intense heating of the nicotine substance, this aerosol impaired vascular function like all of the other products.”

While these results are from an animal experiment, they are applicable to humans. “The approach we used to study vascular function in the rats closely resembles what happens in humans. This is a rodent-equivalent of a common clinical measure in humans in the brachial artery, the major blood vessel of the (upper) arm,” Springer said. “It is known that e-cigarettes can impair vascular function in humans. If any mist or aerosol that rats inhale has this adverse effect, it will likely happen in humans, too.”

Co-authors are Kelly Tan; Daniel D. W. Han, B.A.; and Ronak Derakhshandeh, M.Sc. Author disclosures are in the abstract. The study was funded by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health and the Elfenworks Foundation.

Additional Resources:

• Multimedia is available on the right column of the news release link https://newsroom.heart.org/news/aerosol-from-a-wide-range-of-vaping-devices-negatively-impacted-blood-vessel-function?preview=71ed2c0dfeba1886e5e868d1e74b624e
• American Heart Association Presidential Advisory: New and Emerging Tobacco Products and the Nicotine Endgame
• The science about vaping dangers – and what we don’t know yet
• Vaping combined with smoking is likely as harmful as smoking cigarettes alone
• Follow AHA/ASA news from the meeting on Twitter @HeartNews, #BCVS21

Statements and conclusions of study authors that are presented at American Heart Association scientific meetings are solely those of the study authors and do not necessarily reflect association policy or position. The association makes no representation or warranty as to their accuracy or reliability. The association receives funding primarily from individuals; foundations and corporations (including pharmaceutical, device manufacturers and other companies) also make donations and fund specific association programs and events. The association has strict policies to prevent these relationships from influencing the science content. Revenues from pharmaceutical and biotech companies, device manufacturers and health insurance providers and the Association’s overall financial information are available here.

The American Heart Association’s Basic Cardiovascular Sciences Scientific Sessions (BCVS) is the world’s premier meeting dedicated to the latest advances in basic and translational cardiovascular science. The virtual meeting is Monday-Wednesday, Aug. 23-25, 2021. The primary goal of the meeting is to convene scientists from around the world with the common goal to discover pathways to cardiovascular therapeutics and promoting cardiovascular health. Sessions are focused on new therapies and insights in cardiovascular disease, as well as research in fields like microRNAs, cardiac gene and cell therapy, cardiac development, as well as tissue engineering and iPS cells. The BCVS 2021 Scientific Sessions program, planned by the American Heart Association’s Council on Basic Cardiovascular Sciences, is of special interest to basic cardiovascular scientists, molecular/ cellular biologists, physiologists, translational investigators, clinical trialists, practicing cardiologists, cardiovascular nurses and pharmacists. Follow the conference on Twitter at #BCVS21.

About the American Heart Association

The American Heart Association is a relentless force for a world of longer, healthier lives. We are dedicated to ensuring equitable health in all communities. Through collaboration with numerous organizations, and powered by millions of volunteers, we fund innovative research, advocate for the public's health and share lifesaving resources. The Dallas-based organization has been a leading source of health information for nearly a century. Connect with us on heart.org, Facebook , Twitter or by calling 1-800-AHA-USA1.  

###

NEVER MIND THE BOLLOCKS PUNK IS DEAD

Researchers from Aston University have found that the use of swear words in Britain have declined by more than a quarter since the 1990s

Peer-Reviewed Publication

ASTON UNIVERSITY

Researchers from Aston University have found that the use of swear words in Britain have declined by more than a quarter since the 1990s. Dr Robbie Love, based in the College of Business and Social Sciences, looked at how swearing changed in casual British English conversation between 1994 and 2014.

As part of the study, which is published in Text & Talk: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Language, Discourse & Communication Studies, Dr Love  used two large bodies of transcriptions to analyse the use of language, including: The Spoken British National Corpus gathered in 1994 and the same corpus from 2014. Both texts include over 15 million words, although it was found that swear words accounted for less than 1 per cent.

In total, the amount of swearing was found to have  fallen by 27.6 per cent, from 1,822 words per million in 1994 to 1,320 words per million in 2014.The research findings also suggest that the word 'f***' has been overtaken 'b***dy' as the most popular curse word in the UK.

In the study, Dr Love compared the use of 16 of the nation's most common swear words, including p***, c*** and s**g, from the 1990s to the 2010s.

He also found that trends in the type of swear words used have changed over the last few decades , with 'b****y' being the most common curse word in the 1990s and 'f***' taking precedent in the 2010s.

The analysis suggests that this is largely down to a big decline in the use of 'b****y',while 'f***' has remained relatively steady over the years.  It was also found to be the second most commonly used swear word in 1994, followed by s**t, p***, b****r and c**p.

Other key findings of the study included:

• Over a twenty year period  b****r had fallen from the fifth most common curse to the ninth, while b*****d dropped from seventh to 10th.
• The big climbers include  s**t, from third to second, a**e, from eighth to sixth and d***, from tenth to seventh.
• T**t also rose from the 16th most common swear word in the 1990s to 13th by the 2010s.

Dr Love then analysed demographics and discovered that, although swearing is more common in men than women, the difference between the genders has decreased notably from 2.33 times more frequent in men in 1994 to 1.68 times in 2014.

Another change concerned how much people swear as they age. In both data sets, swearing is most common among people in their 20s, and then declines with age.However, the decline was less steep in the 2010s, suggesting that people continue swearing later in life more than they did in the 1990s.

Dr Robbie Love, lecturer in English at Aston University, said:

“This research reinforces the view that swearing plays a part in our conversational repertoire, performs useful functions in everyday life and is an everyday part of conversation for many people. 

“Despite this, it is relatively under-researched precisely because it is considered to be taboo.

“Swearing performs many social functions including conveying abuse and humour, expressing emotion, creating social bonds, and constructing identity.

“The strong social conditioning around swear words makes them more psychologically arousing and more memorable than other words, and something different happens in the brain when saying them compared to euphemistic equivalents, such as saying "f***" compared to ‘the f-word’.” 

---

DOI

10.1515/text-2020-0051 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Swearing in informal spoken English: 1990s–2010s

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

15-Aug-2021

ANOTHER REASON MERIT PAY SUCKS

Merit-based employment practices contribute to gender pay gap, study says

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN, NEWS BUREAU

 

IMAGE: MERITOCRATIC EMPLOYMENT PRACTICES SUCH AS PERFORMANCE BONUSES OFTEN FAIL TO REDUCE GENDER-BASED PAY INEQUALITY AND MAY ACTUALLY EXACERBATE IT BY ALLOWING THE STATUS QUO TO REMAIN INTACT AT FIRMS, SAYS NEW RESEARCH CO-WRITTEN BY EUNMI MUN, A PROFESSOR OF LABOR AND EMPLOYMENT RELATIONS AT ILLINOIS. view more 

CREDIT: PHOTO BY SCHOOL OF LABOR AND EMPLOYMENT RELATIONS

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Rather than reducing gender-based pay inequality by limiting managers’ reliance on factors such as gender bias and favoritism, a shift to performance bonuses and other meritocratic employment practices may actually widen the gap by preserving the status quo, according to research co-written by a University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign expert who studies labor market institutions.

In a longitudinal study of almost 400,000 employees from nearly 400 Japanese firms over 12 years, the gender gap in bonus pay was found to be greater in workplaces with a merit-based system than in workplaces without it, said Eunmi Mun, a professor of labor and employment relations at Illinois.

“We’re all very familiar with the idea of merit pay at work, that workers get paid based on individual performance and not on other nonperformance-related factors,” she said. “But our paper shows that the opposite can be true, that merit-based pay can actually increase inequality. The findings are, in a sense, counterintuitive to the premise of a merit- or performance-based pay system.”

Mun and co-author Naomi Kodama of Meiji Gakuin University in Japan attempted to overcome the limitations of previous research on merit pay by analyzing data that spanned many organizations and provided historical compensation information about the employees who work there.

“One of the reasons why we don’t know that much about the impact of wage inequality is because data are pretty scarce,” she said. “It’s really hard to collect the kind of wage census data that reflects a shift to merit-based pay and the employee’s wage history. We need to have both levels of information to trace the changes in the impact and perform this massive-scale analysis.

“As part of a broader employment trend to increase productivity and fair treatment by adopting liberal-market practices, Japanese firms also changed from a seniority-based to a merit-based reward system. So in that sense, Japan was a good test case – one that wouldn’t have been possible in the U.S.”

Using the data from Japan, the researchers tested the impact of merit-based systems on three types of compensation: base wage, bonus pay and annual earnings. Findings from the analysis show that the gender bonus gap was higher at companies with merit-based systems, but there was no significant increase in the gender gap in total annual earnings, which includes all types of monetary compensation.

“The more pronounced effect of the merit-based system on bonuses can be attributed to bonus compensation being more directly tied to individual merit and performance than base pay,” Mun said.

Overall, the findings suggest greater variation in the impact of merit-based reward systems on the gender pay gap than previously thought, with differing impacts on compensation types and different employee groups, the researchers said.

“Given the high level of gender inequality produced under the traditional employment system, many expected that the reforms pushing meritocracy would help decrease workplace gender inequality,” Mun said. “But we didn’t find strong evidence of an increase in the meritocratic distribution of rewards between men and women. Rather, we find that in most cases, rewards were distributed in a more, not less, biased way in workplaces that adopted a new merit-based reward system.

“What the reforms seem to have achieved is the preservation of the status quo – that is, a very large gender pay gap instead of the intended goal of increasing productivity by rewarding individual merit and performance.”

The research contributes to understanding gender inequality in times of shifting employment relations and the strong cultural belief in meritocracy across various aspects of society, including education and employment, Mun said.

“Japan is a country whose work culture still has a pretty strong seniority payment system in place and is known for lifetime employment for employees – they get a job when they’re fresh out of college and stay with the same company for a long time, often until they retire,” Mun said. “So it really helps us see what kind of changes that employees experienced during its transition from seniority-based pay to merit pay.”

The meritocracy paradox observed in Japan likely exists in other countries, particularly in countries with a long history of implementing merit-based systems, Mun said.

“Even as it’s become one of the dominant ideologies of our era, there are plenty of warning signs about meritocracy,” she said. “Our study shows that the promises of meritocracy may be illusory and that a healthy skepticism of policies driven by meritocracy is warranted.”

The paper was published in the journal Social Forces.

---

JOURNAL

Social Forces

DOI

10.1093/sf/soab083 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Meritocracy at work?: Merit-based reward systems and gender wage inequality

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

16-Jul-2021

The five most impressive geological structures in the solar system

August 23, 2021 

When we talk about amazing geological features, we often limit ourselves to those on Earth. But as a geologist, I think that’s crazy – there are so many structures on other worlds that can excite and inspire, and that can put processes on our own planet into perspective.

Here, in no particular order, are the five geological structures in the solar system (excluding Earth) that most impress me.

The grandest canyon

I left out the solar system’s biggest volcano, Olympus Mons on Mars, so I could include that planet’s most spectacular canyon, Valles Marineris. Being 3,000km long, hundreds of kilometres wide and up to eight kilometres deep, this is best seem from space. If you were lucky enough to stand on one rim, the opposite rim would be way beyond the horizon.

Valles Marineris seen in a colour-coded topographic view as if from 5,000 km above the surface (left), and imaged by the High Resolution Stereo Camera on Esa’s Mars Express (right). Google Earth and NASA/USGS/ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (G. Neukum)

It was probably initiated by fracturing when an adjacent volcanic region (called Tharsis) began to bulge upwards, but was widened and deepened by a series of catastrophic floods that climaxed more than 3 billion years ago.

Get news that’s free, independent and based on evidence.Sign up for newsletter

Read more: Plate tectonics: new findings fill out the 50-year-old theory that explains Earth's landmasses

Venus’ fold mountains

We are going to learn a lot more about Venus in the 2030s when two Nasa missions and one from Esa (European Space Agency) arrive. Venus is nearly the same size, mass and density as the Earth, causing geologists to puzzle over why it lacks Earth-style plate tectonics and why (or indeed whether) it has comparatively little active volcanism. How does the planet get its heat out?

Fold mountains in Ovda Regio, Venus. The insert is a similar view of part of the Applachians in central Pennsylvania. NASA/JPL

I find it reassuring that at least some aspects of Venus’ geology look familiar. For example, the northern margin of the highlands named Ovda Regio looks strikingly similar, apart from the lack of rivers cutting through the eroded, fold-like pattern, to “fold mountains” on Earth such as the Appalachians, which are the result of a collision between continents.
Blasted Mercury

I’m cheating a little with my next example, because it is both one of the solar system’s largest impact basins and an explosive volcano within it. Mercury’s 1,550km diameter Caloris basin was formed by a major asteroid impact about 3.5 billion years ago, and soon after that its floor was flooded by lavas.

Some time later, a series of explosive eruptions blasted kilometres-deep holes through the solidified lavas near the edge of the basin where the lava cap was thinnest. These sprayed volcanic ash particles out over a range of tens of kilometres. One such deposit, named Agwo Facula, surrounds the explosive vent that I have chosen as my example.
Right: most of Mercury’s Caloris basin, its floor covered by dull, orange lava. Brighter orange patches are remnants of explosive eruptions. Lower left: close-up inside the red box of an explosive volcanic deposit. Upper left: details of the vent interior. NASA/JHUAPL/CIW

Explosive eruptions are driven by the force of expanding gas, and are a surprising find on Mercury, whose proximity to the Sun was previously expected to have starved it of such volatile substances – the heat would have made them boil off. Scientists suspect that there were in fact several explosive eruptions, possibly spaced over a prolonged timescale. This means that gas-forming volatile materials (whose composition will remain uncertain until Esa’s BepiColombo mission starts work in 2026) were repeatedly available in Mercury’s magmas.
The tallest cliff?

In soil or vegetation-rich regions on Earth, cliffs offer the largest exposures of clean rock. Although dangerous to approach, they reveal an uninterrupted cross-section of rock and can be great for fossil hunting. Because geologists love them so much, I give you the seven kilometres-high Verona Rupes. This is a feature on Uranus’s small moon Miranda that is often described as “the tallest cliff in the solar system”, including on a recent Nasa website. This even goes so far as to remark that if you were careless enough to take a tumble off the top, it would take you 12 minutes to fall to the bottom.
Verona Rupes, about 50km long and several km high, but not actually so cliff-like as it appears as seen by Voyager 2 during its 1986 flyby. NASA/JPL

Read more: Mysterious red spots on Mercury get names – but what are they?

This is nonsense, because Verona Rupes is nowhere near vertical. The only images we have of it are from Voyager 2, captured during its 1986 fly by of Uranus. It is undeniably impressive, being almost certainly a geological fault where one block of Miranda’s icy crust (the outermost “shell” of the planet) has moved downwards against the adjacent block.

However, the obliqueness of the view is deceptive, making it impossible to be sure of the face’s steepness – it probably slopes at less than 45 degrees. If you stumbled at the top, I doubt you’d even slide to the bottom. The face appears to be very smooth in the best, but rather low resolution image that we have, but at Miranda’s -170°C daytime temperature, water-ice has a high friction and is not slippery at all.
Titan’s drowned coastline

For my final example I could happily have chosen virtually anywhere on Pluto, but instead I have opted for a hauntingly Earth-like coastline on Saturn’s largest moon, Titan. Here, a large depression in Titan’s water-ice “bedrock” hosts a sea of liquid methane named Ligeia Mare.

Valleys carved by methane rivers draining into the sea have evidently become flooded as the sea level rose. This complexly indented coastline reminds me strongly of Oman’s Musandam peninsula, on the south side of the Straits of Hormuz. There, the local crust has been warped downwards because of the ongoing collision between Arabian and the Asian mainlands. Has something similar happened on Titan? We don’t know yet, but the way that the coastal geomorphology changes around Ligeia Mare suggests to me that its drowned valleys are more than a straightforward result of rising liquid levels.

Left: Part of Titan’s Ligeia Mare, showing a coastline with valleys drowned by a sea of liquid methane. Right: The Musandam peninsula, Arabia, where coastal valleys are similarly drowned, but by a saltwater sea. NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASI/Cornell and Expedition 63, International Space Station (ISS)

Read more: Titan: first global map uncovers secrets of a potentially habitable moon of Saturn

Rock and liquid water on Earth, frigid water-ice and liquid methane on Titan - it makes little difference. Their mutual interactions are the same, and so we see geology repeating itself on different worlds.

Author

David Rothery
Professor of Planetary Geosciences, The Open University

Disclosure statement
David Rothery is Professor of Planetary Geosciences at the Open University. He is co-leader of the European Space Agency's Mercury Surface and Composition Working Group, and a Co-Investigator on MIXS (Mercury Imaging X-ray Spectrometer) that is now on its way to Mercury on board the European Space Agency's Mercury orbiter BepiColombo. He has received funding from the UK Space Agency and the Science & Technology Facilities Council for work related to Mercury and BepiColombo, and from the European Commission under its Horizon 2020 programme for work on planetary geological mapping (776276 Planmap). He is author of Planet Mercury - from Pale Pink Dot to Dynamic World (Springer, 2015), Moons: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2015) and Planets: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2010). He is Educator on the Open University's free learning Badged Open Course (BOC) on Moons and its equivalent FutureLearn Moons MOOC, and chair of the Open University's level 2 course on Planetary Science and the Search for Life.
Partners



The Open University provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation UK.