That's an important point. To be clear, the article also reaches this conclusion: > Of course, like a swagger, the signal is not so much the tantum itself as t

That's an important point. To be clear, the article also reaches this conclusion: > Of course, like a swagger, the signal is not so much the tantum itself as the fact that someone can get away with it. It also links to a paper[1] about NBA players that deals with this phenomenon. Here's the abstract: > Casual empiricism suggests that celebrities engage in more anti-social and other socially unapproved behavior than non-celebrities. I consider a number of reasons for this stylized fact, including one new theory, in which workers who are less substitutable in production are enabled to engage in greater levels of misbehavior because their employers cannot substitute away from them. Looking empirically at a particular class of celebrities - NBA basketball players - I find that misbehavior on the court is due to several factors, including prominently this substitutability effect, though income effects and youthful immaturity also may be important. [1]: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=609946 http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=609946