IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/jbecon/v86y2016i9d10.1007_s11573-016-0810-z.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Quality kills the mediastar? Career paths of intellectuals

Author

Listed:
  • Brinja Meiseberg

    (Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster)

  • Thomas Ehrmann

    (Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster)

  • Jochen Lengers

    (Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster)

Abstract

Recent economic crises show that forecasts made by “experts” are frequently off the mark, fueling discussion about a potential decline in intellectuals’ reliability to offer opinions of value. While intellectuals were originally assumed to be trusted with sound analyses of developments in society, nowadays intellectuals (or those pretending to be) are often blamed for primarily striving for prominence, giving birth to the role model of the “public intellectual”. We adopt an economic perspective and take a market-oriented view on intellectual output. Our data suggests that the market for public intellectuals brings forth few omnipresent “media stars” that are able to largely cover the market demand for “expert knowledge”. On such markets with “winner-takes-all” characteristics, the best performers can command substantially higher (non)monetary incomes. Our research question is: What separates the media stars from the long-tail of media midgets? Thereby, we focus on an economic issue of general interest: Does it pay off to further engage in knowledge specialization, or is it better to capitalize on your current skillset and engage in increasing market presence? We focus on news media and TV presence of Germany’s most influential intellectuals and identify factors that create versus destroy the chances for “intellectual stardom”, applying both a static and a longitudinal perspective. Based on our results, we cautiously draw some conclusions concerning developments of the quality of public intellectual output offered.

Suggested Citation

  • Brinja Meiseberg & Thomas Ehrmann & Jochen Lengers, 2016. "Quality kills the mediastar? Career paths of intellectuals," Journal of Business Economics, Springer, vol. 86(9), pages 1043-1066, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:jbecon:v:86:y:2016:i:9:d:10.1007_s11573-016-0810-z
    DOI: 10.1007/s11573-016-0810-z
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11573-016-0810-z
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11573-016-0810-z?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Adler, Moshe, 1985. "Stardom and Talent," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 75(1), pages 208-212, March.
    2. Hamermesh, Daniel S & Biddle, Jeff E, 1994. "Beauty and the Labor Market," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(5), pages 1174-1194, December.
    3. Sendhil Mullainathan & Andrei Shleifer, 2005. "The Market for News," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(4), pages 1031-1053, September.
    4. Landes, William M & Posner, Richard A, 2000. "Citations, Age, Fame, and the Web," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 29(1), pages 319-344, January.
    5. Blaise Cronin & Debora Shaw, 2002. "Banking (on) different forms of symbolic capital," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 53(14), pages 1267-1270, December.
    6. Rosen, Sherwin, 1981. "The Economics of Superstars," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 71(5), pages 845-858, December.
    7. R. Glenn Hubbard, 2004. "The Economist as Public Intellectual," The Journal of Economic Education, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 35(4), pages 391-394, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Sendhil Mullainathan & Andrei Shleifer, 2005. "The Market for News," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(4), pages 1031-1053, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Budzinski, Oliver & Kohlschreiber, Marie & Kuchinke, Björn & Pannicke, Julia, 2019. "Does music quality matter for audience voters in a music contest?," Ilmenau Economics Discussion Papers 122, Ilmenau University of Technology, Institute of Economics.
    2. Helmut Dietl & Anil Özdemir & Andrew Rendall, 2020. "The role of facial attractiveness in tennis TV-viewership," Sport Management Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(3), pages 521-535, July.
    3. Michael Lewis & Yeujun Yoon, 2018. "An Empirical Examination of the Development and Impact of Star Power in Major League Baseball," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 19(2), pages 155-187, February.
    4. Nela Filimon & Jordi López-Sintas & Carlos Padrós-Reig, 2011. "A test of Rosen’s and Adler’s theories of superstars," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer;The Association for Cultural Economics International, vol. 35(2), pages 137-161, May.
    5. Gaenssle Sophia & Budzinski Oliver & Astakhova Daria, 2018. "Conquering the Box Office: Factors Influencing Success of International Movies in Russia," Review of Network Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 17(4), pages 245-266, December.
    6. Vincenzo Carrieri & Francesco Principe & Michele Raitano, 2018. "What makes you ‘super-rich’? New evidence from an analysis of football players’ wages," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 70(4), pages 950-973.
    7. Martina Gianecchini & Alberto Alvisi, 2015. "Late career of superstar soccer players: win, play, or gain?," "Marco Fanno" Working Papers 0192, Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche "Marco Fanno".
    8. Majda Benzidia & Michel Lubrano, 2016. "A Bayesian Look at American Academic Wages: The Case of Michigan State University," AMSE Working Papers 1628, Aix-Marseille School of Economics, France.
    9. Giovanni Bernardo & Massimo Ruberti & Roberto Verona, 2022. "Image is everything! Professional football players' visibility and wages: evidence from the Italian Serie A," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 54(5), pages 595-614, January.
    10. Popovic, Milenko, 2009. "Dynamic Models of Arts Labor Supply," MPRA Paper 19397, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    11. Aloys Prinz, 2017. "Rankings as coordination games: the Dutch Top 2000 pop song ranking," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer;The Association for Cultural Economics International, vol. 41(4), pages 379-401, November.
    12. Blomkvist, Katarina & Kappen, Philip & Zander, Ivo, 2014. "Superstar inventors—Towards a people-centric perspective on the geography of technological renewal in the multinational corporation," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 43(4), pages 669-682.
    13. Herm, Steffen & Callsen-Bracker, Hans-Markus & Kreis, Henning, 2014. "When the crowd evaluates soccer players’ market values: Accuracy and evaluation attributes of an online community," Sport Management Review, Elsevier, vol. 17(4), pages 484-492.
    14. Alcalá, Francisco & González-Maestre, Miguel, 2010. "Copying, superstars, and artistic creation," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 22(4), pages 365-378, December.
    15. Fumarco, Luca & Gibbs, Benjamin & Jarvis, Jonathan & Rossi, Giambattista, 2016. "The Relative Age Effect Reversal among NHL Elite," MPRA Paper 75691, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    16. Sudip Bhattacharjee & Ram D. Gopal & Kaveepan Lertwachara & James R. Marsden & Rahul Telang, 2005. "The Effect of P2P File Sharing on Music Markets: A Survival Analysis of Albums on Ranking Charts," Working Papers 05-26, NET Institute, revised Oct 2005.
    17. Richard J. Paulsen, 2022. "Arts majors and the Great Recession: a cross-sectional analysis of educational choices and employment outcomes," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer;The Association for Cultural Economics International, vol. 46(4), pages 635-658, December.
    18. Lasse Steiner & Lucian Schneider, 2012. "The Happy Artist?: An Empirical Application of the Work-Preference Model," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 430, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    19. Julianne Treme & Samuel K. Allen, 2011. "Press Pass: Payoffs to Media Exposure Among National Football League (NFL) Wide Receivers," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 12(3), pages 370-390, June.
    20. Kurt William Rotthoff & Craig A. Depken & Peter A. Groothuis, 2014. "Influences on sponsorship deals in NASCAR: indirect evidence from time on camera," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 46(19), pages 2277-2289, July.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Incentives; Search costs; Superstar effects; winner-takes-all markets; Quality assessment;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D22 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Firm Behavior: Empirical Analysis
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • L15 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Information and Product Quality

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:jbecon:v:86:y:2016:i:9:d:10.1007_s11573-016-0810-z. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.