@techreport{Beck2008Diderot,
abstract = {Like many new products, newly released creative goods such as books, music records and movies are sometimes `surprise' hits but often flops. Experimental and empirical research suggests that it is hard to predict the demand for a new creative good, and therefore its success, even for industry experts. Rules of thumb on the quantitative properties of demand uncertainty exist for various creative industries \textendash{} including a rule by Denis Diderot (1763) according to which one out of ten published books is a commercial success. Yet, representative evidence on any industry's new-product success rate is scarce. This paper studies new-product success in a random sample of novels. Its empirical strategy to identify success \textendash{} a simple characterization of author-publisher bargaining combined with a parsimonious model of new-product diffusion \textendash{} is based on the common observation that word-of-mouth is a crucial success factor in creative industries. Parametric and semi-parametric estimation results corroborate Diderot's rule: between 10 and 15% of novels enjoy significantly positive effects of word-of-mouth. --  -- Neu ver\"{o}ffentlichte Kreativg\"{u}ter wie B\"{u}cher, Musikalben und Filme sind, \"{a}hnlich anderen neuen Produkten, zwar manchmal \"{U}berraschungserfolge, meistens jedoch Flops. Laut experimentellem und empirischem Forschungsstand ist es selbst f\"{u}r Branchenexperten schwierig, die Nachfrage nach einem neuen Kreativgut, und damit seinen kommerziellen Erfolg, vorherzusagen. Daumenregeln zu den quantitativen Eigenschaften dieser Nachfrageunsicherheit existieren in einigen kreativen Branchen},
address = {Berlin},
author = {Jonathan Beck},
copyright = {http://www.econstor.eu/dspace/Nutzungsbedingungen},
keywords = {D83; L82; Z1; 330; New-product success rate; demand uncertainty; word-of-mouth; creative industries; unter anderem eine Regel von Denis Diderot (1763), wonach eines von zehn ver\"{o}ffentlichten B\"{u}chern ein kommerzieller Erfolg ist. Allerdings mangelt es an repr\"{a}sentativer Evidenz zu der Erfolgsrate neuer Produkte, gleich in welcher Branche. Dieses Papier untersucht den Erfolg neuer Produkte in einer zuf\"{a}lligen Stichprobe von Romanen. Die verwendete empirische Strategie zur Identifikation von Erfolg},
language = {eng},
number = {SP II 2008-13},
publisher = {WZB},
title = {Diderot\textasciiacute{}s rule},
type = {Discussion papers // WZB, Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin f\"{u}r Sozialforschung, Schwerpunkt II M\"{a}rkte und Politik, Abteilung Wettbewerb und Innovation},
url = {http://hdl.handle.net/10419/51216},
year = {2008}
}
