EXPERTS’ AWARDS AND ECONOMIC SUCCESS: EVIDENCE FROM AN ITALIAN LITERARY PRIZE

Michela Ponzo and Vincenzo Scoppa ()

No 201306, Working Papers from Università della Calabria, Dipartimento di Economia, Statistica e Finanza "Giovanni Anania" - DESF

Abstract: Product quality is often unobservable ex-ante and consumers rely on experts’ judgments, sometimes coming under the form of ratings or awards. Do awards affect consumers’ choices or they are conferred to the most popular products? To disentangle this issue, we use data of the most important Italian Literary Prize, the “Strega Prize”, undertaking two different estimation strategies to evaluate the impact on book sales of being awarded the Prize. First, we adopt a Regression Discontinuity Design using as dependent variable a measure of book sales and as forcing variable (proxying for intrinsic book quality) the jury votes received by each nominated book in the competition. We find a very strong impact of the Strega Prize on sales. Second, using weekly data on appearances in bestseller lists, we estimate a difference-in-differences model, comparing sales performance of treated and control books before the award is conferred with their respective performance afterwards. The results confirm a huge influence of the Prize on book sales and show that most of the impact occurs in the weeks following the announcement.

Keywords: Cultural Economics; Awards; Literary Prize; Book Sales; Product Quality; Regression Discontinuity Design; Difference-in-Differences model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D12 L15 L80 M30 Z10 Z11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 25 pages
Date: 2013-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cul, nep-hrm and nep-mkt
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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http://www.ecostat.unical.it/RePEc/WorkingPapers/WP06_2013.pdf First version, 2013-05 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Experts’ awards and economic success: evidence from an Italian literary prize (2015)
Working Paper: Experts' Awards and Economic Success: Evidence from an Italian Literary Prize (2015)
Working Paper: Experts’ Awards and Economic Success: Evidence from an Italian Literary Prize (2013)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:clb:wpaper:201306

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