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Esteem-seekers can affect the esteem they desire not only by improving their performances but also by adjusting their audience size–seeking secrecy to avoid disesteem and seeking audience to magnify positive esteem. Such behaviour affects performance partly by affecting esteem incentives and partly by absorbing energy and effort that might otherwise have been put into performance enhancement. One effect of particular interest here is the case where esteem cannot operate because the actor is not given ‘recognition’. The search for recognition may involve a desire for publicity/attention for its own sake as well as for the esteem that publicity offers. A striking case in which attention-seeking and esteem-seeking come apart is in the ‘enfant terrible’ case where the actor performs deliberately badly (and receives disesteem) in order to get greater attention. We offer an explanation for this case in terms of long-term esteem-seeking.

This chapter explores how artists portray themselves as those with true creative visions. Following bohemian culture rooted in the Belle Epoque in Paris, artists often fulfill their roles by behaving badly, or as enfant terribles. In particular, they often highlight their eccentricities. The association between eccentricity and creative genius is stronger for male artists than for female artists. Artists also portray themselves as aesthetically obsessed and economically disinterested. In turn, dealers portray themselves as supporters of artists' creative visions. Dealers work to subtly intervene in the creative process through their negotiations of what kinds of work artists make, how they install these works in the exhibition space, and the timing of exhibitions. Collectors perform their role as supporters of artists’ creative visions by providing social and economic support to artists. Lower-status artists have less autonomy in the creative process than higher-status artists, as their creative visions are seen as less precious.

In 1976, when BPA was aggressively promoting nuclear power projects, Ken Lay had yet to form Enron, and Paul Joskow was still years away from conceiving the blueprint of a restructured utility industry, Amory Lovins, then a 29-year old consultant physicist, published a now famous article, “Energy Strategy: The Road Not Taken,” in Foreign Affairs. Drawing on Robert Frost’s poetic image, he saw two contrasting energy paths the nation might follow over the next fifty years: a hard path relying on centralized fossil fuel and nuclear power stations to increase energy supply and a soft path based on efficiency and renewable energy sources. The commitment to a long-term coal economy, he prophesied, would double atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration early in the next century. Described as the “enfant terrible of the energy left,” Lovins became a prolific author and proponent of sustainable energy whose urgent recommendations were dismissed by utility and nuclear interests but eventually gained mainstream credibility. He urged an end to fossil fuel subsidies and early on advocated a severance royalty, now called a carbon tax, in order to place renewable energy – wind, solar, and biomass – on an equal footing by reflecting the costs of externalities such as pollution and climate change. A brilliant promoter of his ideas, Lovins invented the concept of the negawatt – a theoretical unit of power representing the amount of energy saved (measured in watts) as a direct result of energy conservation or increased efficiency. Over time conservation gained political traction, finding expression in state and federal law supporting demand-side resources. In a recent book, Reinventing Fire, Lovins envisages several different possible scenarios for the future of the U.S. electricity system. One of these, “Renew,” charts a future in which by 2050 centralized renewables account for 80 percent of U.S. electricity generation. “Transform,” an even more ambitious forecast, envisions a radical change in the centralized grid architecture that has existed since Edison’s time, using distributed resources – rooftop solar, fuel cells, and small-scale wind coupled with smart meters – to create interlinked microgrids that can run in conjunction with the grid or seamlessly disconnect. Lovins relies on clean energy’s economic fundamentals rather than (as he earlier did) carbon pricing. His prescription has met with countervailing views from many energy economists but gains support from renewables’ recent market penetration. He remains a voice of cautious optimism in an otherwise bleak energy worldview.