Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Best-selling Authors and Football Players

Alex Tabarrok (Marginal Revolution, September 13) has a very clear post (“Winner take-all economics”), explaining in simple terms the economics of superstars analyzed by the late Sherwin Rosen in the early 1980s, and why J.K. Rowling (the author of Harry Potter) is the first author in the history of the world to earn a billion dollars, while Homer and Shakespeare earned obviously much less.

One could add that the leverage of modern communication also explains why soccer players were not rich in the 1950s or 1960s but win “superstars’ money” today.

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