Since the near future should see a rapidly expanding set of probes of the halo masses of individual early-type galaxies, we introduce a convenient parameter for characterising the halo masses from both observational and theoretical results: dML, the logarithmic radial gradient of the mass-to-light ratio. Using halo density profiles from LCDM simulations, we derive predictions for this gradient for various galaxy luminosities and star formation efficiencies $epsilon_{SF}$. As a pilot study, we assemble the available dML data from kinematics in early-type galaxies - representing the first unbiassed study of halo masses in a wide range of early-type galaxy luminosities - and find a correlation between luminosity and dML, such that the brightest galaxies appear the most dark-matter dominated. We find that the gradients in most of the brightest galaxies may fit in well with the LCDM predictions, but that there is also a population of fainter galaxies whose gradients are so low as to imply an unreasonably high star formation efficiency $epsilon_{SF} > 1$. This difficulty is eased if dark haloes are not assumed to have the standard LCDM profiles, but lower central concentrations.
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