Superstar Extinction

62 Pages Posted: 29 Dec 2008 Last revised: 31 Oct 2022

See all articles by Pierre Azoulay

Pierre Azoulay

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) - Sloan School of Management; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

Joshua Graff Zivin

School of Global Policy and Strategy; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

Jialan Wang

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign - Department of Finance

Date Written: December 2008

Abstract

We estimate the magnitude of spillovers generated by 112 academic "superstars" who died pre- maturely and unexpectedly, thus providing an exogenous source of variation in the structure of their collaborators' coauthorship networks. Following the death of a superstar, we find that collaborators experience, on average, a lasting 5 to 8% decline in their quality-adjusted publication rates. By exploring interactions of the treatment effect with a variety of star, coauthor and star/coauthor dyad characteristics, we seek to adjudicate between plausible mechanisms that might explain this finding. Taken together, our results suggest that spillovers are circumscribed in idea space, but less so in physical or social space. In particular, superstar extinction reveals the boundaries of the scientific field to which the star contributes -- the "invisible college."

Suggested Citation

Azoulay, Pierre and Graff Zivin, Joshua and Wang, Jialan, Superstar Extinction (December 2008). NBER Working Paper No. w14577, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1320823

Pierre Azoulay (Contact Author)

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Joshua Graff Zivin

School of Global Policy and Strategy ( email )

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Jialan Wang

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign - Department of Finance ( email )

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