Expert Explains Why Gratuities Are Good for Economies at ASU

SAN ANGELO, TX - Angelo State University will host Dr. Anthony Gill, a professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Washington, for a public presentation on the U.S. practice of tipping service workers on Thursday, March 26, at 5:30 p.m. in the Mathematics-Computer Science (MCS) Building, 2200 Dena Drive.

Sponsored by the Texas Tech University Free Market Institute at Angelo State University, Gill's presentation will take place in Room 100 of the MCS Building and is free and open to the public.

In his presentation titled "Tipping Point: Why Gratuities are Good for Economies," Gill will explore how the practice of providing gratuities (i.e., tips) to service employees has come under a great deal of scrutiny and criticism in the past two decades. A few high-end restaurants have even tried to eliminate the practice of tipping the wait staff and replace it with a "living wage" for their employees. However, tipping has been a cultural practice that has been around for centuries in a number of countries and continues to hold strong in the U.S.

Gill will provide three reasons why tipping is actually a beneficial social norm in many economic environments. He will also address some of the recent technological and social changes that have corrupted the usefulness of this practice.

Also an adjunct professor of sociology at UW, Gill is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Baylor University's Institute for Studies of Religion and a Senior Fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research. He has become internationally renowned for his work on the defense of tipping and gratuities. He is the author of two books, as well as numerous journal articles and book chapters, and was the creator and host of the "Research on Religion" podcast series that ran from 2010-18. He holds a Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, Los Angeles.

The TTU Free Market Institute at ASU aims to advance research and teaching related to the free enterprise system and the institutional environment necessary for it to function well, and to support the missions of the ASU Norris-Vincent College of Business. The institute also develops and operates student and public programming that is supported by $1 million in anonymous gifts for the benefit of ASU students and the San Angelo community.