Welcome to Econ Talk, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty.

I'm your host, Russ Roberts of Stanford University's Hoover Institution.

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Today is October 30, 2017, and my guest is Anthony Gill, a professor of political science at the University of Washington.

He hosts the podcast research on religion, which you can find at researchonreligion.org.

He appeared on e-contalk in January of 2014 to discuss the economics of religion,

and he is back today to talk about a recent paper he's written on tipping,

the leaving a little extra on top of your restaurant bill, or your taxi fare for the server in the restaurant or the cab driver.

Tony, welcome back to Econ Talk.

Great to be here. Thanks, Russ.

So there's been some unease about tipping in recent years.

Some people are trying to give it up.

Some restaurants have stopped tipping as a practice.

There's been some social commentary that tipping is a bad thing.

Describe some of that unease and criticism, and then we'll talk about why tipping seems to persist, despite those unease that unease.

Yeah, about five years ago, or so, there was a trend in the restaurant industry toward the no-tip slash living wage model of providing for the wage staff.

And there's a spade of articles and popular journals from Market Watch and Fortune Magazine slate that said tipping is going out of fashion.

It's not pleasant for the customers, and it would be more efficient for the restaurants just to have a flat fee for the service or to price it into the actual price you pay at the end and leave less to the customer.

That happened in several dozen restaurants. Most of them tended to be upper scale, boutique type of restaurants.

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