Career Lotto: Labor Supply in Winner-Take-All Markets

Arbeitspapier

Are people prone to selecting occupations with highly skewed income distributions despite minuscule chances of success? Assembling a comprehensive pool of potential teenage entrants into professional tennis (a typical winner-take-all market), we construct objective measures of relative ability and earnings projections. We find that prospective tennis professionals are attracted to right-skewed earnings distributions, independent of mean and variance. If skewness in prize money fell to zero, males would be 23% and females 5% less likely to continue pursuing a professional career, on average. Thus, winner-take-all labor markets appear to systematically encourage those with modest talents to pursue long-shot careers.

Angaben zum Objekt

• Sprache: Englisch

Verweise und Beziehungen

• Erschienen in: Series: IZA Discussion Papers ; No. 12012

Klassifikation und Themen

• Klassifikation: Wirtschaft ; Time Allocation and Labor Supply ; Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity ; Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials ; Professional Labor Markets; Occupational Licensing ; Sports; Gambling; Restaurants; Recreation; Tourism
• Thema: winner-take-all markets ; superstar markets ; labor supply ; human capital ; gender differences ; skewness preferences

Beteiligte, Orts- und Zeitangaben

• Ereignis: Geistige Schöpfung
• (wer): Grove, Wayne A. ; Jetter, Michael ; Papps, Kerry L.
• Ereignis: Veröffentlichung
• (wer): Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
• (wo): Bonn
• (wann): 2018

Weitere Informationen

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/193306
• Letzte Aktualisierung: 10.03.2025, 11:46 MEZ