Finalist for the OMT Division Best International Paper Award
Previous literature on prize effects has largely considered winning vs. losing as the only factor that differentiates a prize’s impact on its nominees. It is believed that initial winners of a prestigious prize are endorsed with legitimacy and status, and therefore proceed to develop far more successful careers than initial nonwinners, even when the initial difference between the two is just luck. However, empirical findings are mixed: some research finds support for the winners’ accumulated advantages, others find the opposite. In this paper, I introduce another important factor: average quality of the nominee pool. Exploiting a unique context of the Akutagawa and the Naoki Prize for Japanese literature, 1935-2018, I compare the subsequent creative outcomes between nonwinners in highly creative cohorts (“small fish in big ponds”) and winners in less creative cohorts (“big fish in small ponds”). Corroborating that membership of each cohort is quasi-random in this context, the two groups can be regarded as having essentially equivalent quality, with the second group luckier than the first. I argue and find that, counter to the extant theory’s prediction, initially “unlucky” small fish in big ponds produce more novels and collaborate with larger numbers of new publishers subsequently, than initially “luckier” big fish in small ponds. With higher productivity and exploration in publishers leading to more future wins, I show two indirect pathways through which initial small-fish-in-a-big-pond experience can help an individual to attain sustained creativity. I contribute to prize effects literature by demonstrating how initial advantages can be reversed.