Media Papers: A Historical Perspective Stefano DellaVigna UC Berkeley and NBER Roundtable on the Economics of the Media October 29, 2011

Introduction Research on the economics of the media has flourished What we’d 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?

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.

35 Years of Media Papers Question: How many media papers have been published since 1975?

35 Years of Media Papers Question: How many media papers have been published since 1975? [30]

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?

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]

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

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

35 Years of Media Papers Strong growth over time of media papers: 1.5% of all top-5 articles in ‘05-’10

35 Years of Media Papers: List

35 Years of Media Papers What about impact? Google Scholar citations

35 Years of Media Papers Ten most cited papers (eleven with a tie) All but one recent (<=10 years) Mixture of empirical and theoretical papers Models of media: 4 Impact of media: 2 Evaluation of Media Bias: 2 IO papers: 3

35 Years of Advertising Papers

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

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 Conclusion