Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/56199 
Year of Publication: 
2007
Series/Report no.: 
SSE/EFI Working Paper Series in Economics and Finance No. 658
Publisher: 
Stockholm School of Economics, The Economic Research Institute (EFI), Stockholm
Abstract: 
Chung and Cox (1994) provided an intuitively appealing stochastic model which indicates that superstars may exist regardless of talent and which gives rise to the Yule distribution. We adopt a different empirical approach and test its goodness-of-fit using a parametric bootstrap and several powerful test statistics. Just like the discrete Pareto distribution, it is overwhelmingly rejected: it is a fairly accurate approximation of the lower quantiles of the superstar distribution, but overestimates the snowball effect that makes consumers purchase records of the most successful artists. In other words, the Yule distribution captures stardom, but not superstardom. A generalization of the Yule distribution provides an excellent fit in two of the three data sets.
Subjects: 
Superstardom
Yule distribution
JEL: 
J31
L82
Z11
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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