  In this paper, we use the Herschel Reference Survey to make a direct test of
the hypothesis that the growth of a stellar bulge leads to a reduction in the
star-formation efficiency of a galaxy (or conversely a growth in the
gas-depletion timescale) as a result of the stabilisation of the gaseous disk
by the gravitational field of the bulge. We find a strong correlation between
star-formation efficiency and specific star-formation rate in galaxies without
prominent bulges and in galaxies of the same morphological type, showing that
there must be some other process besides the growth of a bulge that reduces the
star-formation efficiency in galaxies. However, we also find that galaxies with
more prominent bulges (Hubble types E to Sab) do have significantly lower
star-formation efficiencies than galaxies with later morphological types, which
is at least consistent with the hypothesis that the growth of a bulge leads to
the reduction in the star-formation efficiency. The answer to the question in
the title is therefore, yes and no: bulges may reduce the star-formation
efficiency in galaxies but there must also be some other process at work. We
also find that there is a significant but small difference in the
star-formation efficiencies of galaxies with and without bars, in the sense
that galaxies with bars have slightly higher star-formation efficiencies.
