TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Koenig, Felix
        TI  - Technical Change and Superstar Effects: Evidence from the Rollout of Television
        PY  - 2021/Dec/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 14978
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/publications/dp14978
        AB  - Technical change that extends market scale can generate winner-take-all dynamics, with large income growth among top earners. I test this "superstar model" in the entertainer labor market, where the historic rollout of television creates a natural experiment in scale-related technological change. The resulting inequality changes are consistent with superstar theory: the launch of a local TV station skews the entertainer wage distribution sharply to the right, with the biggest impact at the very top of the distribution, while negatively impacting workers below the star level. The findings provide evidence of superstar effects and distinguish such effects from popular alternative models.
        KW  - top incomes
KW  - inequality
KW  - superstar effect
KW  - technical change
        ER  -