Reaching high levels of artistic creation in a society requires institutions that facilitate the sorting of the most talented individuals of each generation and the development of their skills across artistic careers. This working paper takes a professional career approach to analyzing how...

We show that both talent and popularity significantly contribute to stars’ market values in German soccer. The talent-versus-popularity controversy on the sources of stardom goes back to Rosen (1981) and Adler (1985). All attempts to resolve the controversy empirically face the difficulty of...

This paper discusses the emergence and growth of various media industries in Britain. It shows how a rise in real wages and leisure time, rapid urbanisation and the development of fast urban transport networks, and a rapid growth of the market’s size let to a sharp rise in the demand for media...

In recent decades, explosive growth in the salaries of top earners, combined with income stagnation or decline for most others, has formed a renewed challenge to the claim that a free market serves the public interest. These trends lend new urgency to understanding why some people earn so much...