The Economics of Taylor Swift

Cowen’s 2nd Law states that there is a literature on everything. I would certainly expect there to be a literature on the best-selling musician in the world. And of course there is; Google Scholar returns 23,500 results for “Taylor Swift”, and we’ve done 5 posts here at EWED. But surprisingly, searching EconLit returns nothing, suggesting there are currently no published economics papers on Taylor Swift, though searching “Taylor” and “Swift” separately reveals hundreds of articles about the Taylor Rule and the SWIFT payment system. Google Scholar does report some economics working papers about her, but the opportunity to be the first to publish on Taylor Swift in an economics journal (and likely get many media interview requests as a result) is still out there.

Swift presents a variety of angles that could be worthy of a paper; re-recording her masters forcopyright reasons, her efforts to channel concert tickets to loyal fans over re-sellers, or her sheer macroeconomic impact. I’ve added a note about this to my ideas page (where I share many other paper ideas).

In the mean time, I’ll be giving a short talk on the Economics of Taylor Swift at 7pm Eastern on Monday, September 16th, as part of a larger online panel. The event is aimed at Providence College alumni, but I believe anyone can register here.

Update 10/25/24: A recording of the event is here, and a recording of a followup interview I did with local TV is here.

8 thoughts on “The Economics of Taylor Swift

  1. Joy Buchanan's avatar Joy Buchanan September 12, 2024 / 12:27 pm

    In class today, I used her concert tickets to illustrate the concept of a shortage.

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  2. bretthburkey's avatar bretthburkey September 12, 2024 / 12:34 pm

    Hello, While the piece attached will never find its way to any scholarly publication, it has served as a compelling device to teach some high school Economics concepts. I made this last year before the Super Bowl.

    Brett

    Liked by 1 person

  3. Tyler Ransom's avatar Tyler Ransom September 13, 2024 / 6:35 am

    Wayne Geerling et al have a forthcoming paper:
    “Swiftonomics: Using Taylor Swift to Teach Economics” (with Kelsey Halfen-Dahlberg, Signè DeWind, Austin Green & G. Dirk Mateer), [forthcoming] at Journal for Economic Educators.

    Liked by 1 person

    • James Bailey's avatar James Bailey September 16, 2024 / 4:57 pm

      Cowen’s Law strikes again

      Like

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