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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
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. 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.
    2. Sendhil Mullainathan & Andrei Shleifer, 2005. "The Market for News," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(4), pages 1031-1053, September.
    3. 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.
    4. Adler, Moshe, 1985. "Stardom and Talent," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 75(1), pages 208-212, March.
    5. Rosen, Sherwin, 1981. "The Economics of Superstars," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 71(5), pages 845-858, December.
    6. 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.
    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.
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    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.

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    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

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