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 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?

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 (<=10 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