The Winner-Take-All Society

Disney chairman Michael Eisner topped the 1993 Business Week chart of America's highest-paid executives, his $203 million in earnings roughly 10,000 times that of the lowest paid Disney employee.

During the last two decades, the top one percent of U.S. earners captured more than 40 percent of the country's total earnings growth, one of the largest shifts any society has endured without a revolution or military defeat. Robert H. Frank and Philip J. Cook argue that behind this shift lies the spread of "winner-take-all markets"—markets in which small differences in performance give rise to enormous differences in reward. Long familiar in sports and entertainment, this payoff pattern has increasingly permeated law, finance, fashion, publishing, and other fields. The result: in addition to the growing gap between rich and poor, we see important professions like teaching and engineering in aching need of more talent. This relentless emphasis on coming out on top—the best-selling book, the blockbuster film, the Super Bowl winner—has molded our discourse in ways that many find deeply troubling.

The Winner-Take-All Society - Robert H. Frank and Philip J. Cook Preface
Acknowledgments
1. Winner-Take-All Marekts
2. How Winner-Take-All Markets Arise
3. The Growth of Winner-Take-All Markets
4. Runaway Incomes at the Top
5. Minor-League Superstars
6. Too Many Contestants?
7. The Problem of Wasteful Investment
8. The Battle for Educational Prestige
9. Curbing Wasteful Competition
10. Media and Culture in the Winner-Take-All Society
11. Old Wine in New Bottles
Notes
Bibliography
Index"A major contribution to the debate about causes and consequences of inequality in America"
—The New York Times Book Review.

"Should be at the forefront of everyone's attention"
—Lester C. Thurow, Los Angeles Times

"Frank and Cook break new ground by linking the win-at-all costs mentality to economic and cultural problems."
—Business Week

"A fun, informative, and provocative read"
—The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

Robert Frank is a senior special writer at The Wall Street Journal, where he writes a weekly column and daily blog called The Wealth Report. He has been with the Journal for 13 years, with postings in Atlanta, London, Singapore, and New York. He was part of a team of reporters that won an Overseas Press Club award in 1998 for its coverage of developing economies. He lives in New York with his wife and daughter.

Philip J. Cook studied econometrics at the University of Michigan and the University of California, Berkeley. An author and educator, he has taught at Duke University for 40 years and authored several books, including The Winner-Take-All Society with Robert H. Frank, and The Gun Debate: What Everyone Needs to Know with Kristin A. Goss.