Durable good celebrities

Celebrity musicians and other famous touring performers face problems similar to those of a durable good seller with market power, since the number of tickets sold (or expected to be sold) at a given time has intertemporal demand effects. I show that the durability of celebrity output leads to “excessively” long tours and that there is a strong incentive to take actions early in one's career that will increase costs later in one's career. These effects may help explain high rates of drug abuse and other anomalous self-destructive behavior observed among celebrities.