This paper examines, both theoretically and empirically, the effect of social networks and belonging to minority groups (or race) on the probability of winning in reality television shows. We develop a theoretical model that studies viewer behavior by presenting a framework of competition...

The performances of alternative two-stage estimators for the endogenous switching regression model with discrete dependent variables are compared, with regard to their usefulness as starting values for maximum likelihood estimation. This is especially important in the presence of large...