Media Papers: A Historical Perspective

1
Media Papers A Historical Perspective

• Stefano DellaVigna
• UC Berkeley and NBER
• Roundtable on the Economics of the Media
• October 29, 2011

2
Introduction

• Research on the economics of the media has
  flourished
• What wed like to know Where is the field
  leading?
• What we can know What has worked so far?
• Take a historical perspective
• Use data set of all papers in top-five journals
  (AER, QJE, JPE, EMA, REStud) from 1975 to 2010
  from Card, DellaVigna, and Malmendier (JEP 2011)
• Code papers on the economics of the media
• Any trends?
• Which papers are most cited?

3
Definition

• Code paper on economics of the media if it
  contains in title words
• News, newspaper, or media
• Radio, TV, television, cable, movie, Internet,
  web
• Exclude papers not focused on media such as
  auctioning off cards on eBay
• Categorize whether mainly empirical or
  theoretical
• Code papers on economics of advertising if it
  contains in title the word advertising.

4
35 Years of Media Papers

• Question How many media papers have been
  published since 1975?

5
35 Years of Media Papers

• Question How many media papers have been
  published since 1975? 30

6
35 Years of Media Papers

• Question How many media papers have been
  published since 1975? 30
• Question How many advertising papers have been
  published since 1975?

7
35 Years of Media Papers

• Question How many media papers have been
  published since 1975? 30
• Question How many advertising papers have been
  published since 1975? 33

8
35 Years of Media Papers

• Question How many media papers have been
  published since 1975? 30
• Media papers by journal
• QJE 13 articles
• AER 8 articles
• RES 4 articles
• JPE 3 articles
• EMA 2 articles
• By method
• 23 mainly empirical, 7 mainly theoretical

9
35 Years of Media Papers

• Question How many advertising papers have been
  published since 1975? 33
• Advertising papers by journal
• QJE 3 articles
• AER 14 articles
• RES 5 articles
• JPE 8 articles
• EMA 3 articles

10
35 Years of Media Papers

• Strong growth over time of media papers 1.5 of
  all top-5 articles in 05-10

11
35 Years of Media Papers List
12
35 Years of Media Papers

• What about impact? Google Scholar citations

13
35 Years of Media Papers

• Ten most cited papers (eleven with a tie)
• All but one recent (lt10 years)
• Mixture of empirical and theoretical papers
• Models of media 4
• Impact of media 2
• Evaluation of Media Bias 2
• IO papers 3

14
35 Years of Advertising Papers

15
35 Years of Advertising Papers

• Ten most cited papers
• All but one before 2000
• Some very highly cited papers

16
Conclusion

• Hard to forecast future trends
• Past trends in publication suggest that economics
  of the media is growth area
• Largely it took the place of economics of
  advertising
• About 4 papers per year in top journals out of
  300 published per year
• Research covers much ground
• IO topics
• Models of media communication
• Evidence on media impact
• Evidence on media bias

17
(No Transcript)