It may be that by increasing the effective size of the markets for their skills, technological change and globalization can also explain some of the large increase in earnings of top athletes, musicians, and even chief executive officers. In the popular press, the phenomenon of the very few reaping enormous windfalls has become known as the winner-take-all economy.
However, other researchers have noted that a large share of the top earners is found in industries such as finance and law, suggesting that deregulation, corporate governance, and tax policy may have also played a role in the trend toward rising inequality.