IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ces/ceswps/_1948.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Benefits of Being Economics Professor A (and not Z)

Author

Listed:
  • Mirjam van Praag
  • Bernard M.S. van Praag
  • Bernard M.S. van Praag

Abstract

Alphabetic name ordering on multi-authored academic papers, which is the convention in the economics discipline and various other disciplines, is to the advantage of people whose last name initials are placed early in the alphabet. As it turns out, Professor A, who has been a first author more often than Professor Z, will have published more articles and experienced a faster growth rate over the course of her career as a result of reputation and visibility. Moreover, authors know that name ordering matters and indeed take ordering seriously: Several characteristics of an author group composition determine the decision to deviate from the default alphabetic name order to a significant extent.

Suggested Citation

  • Mirjam van Praag & Bernard M.S. van Praag & Bernard M.S. van Praag, 2007. "The Benefits of Being Economics Professor A (and not Z)," CESifo Working Paper Series 1948, CESifo.
    • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_1948
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp1948.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. David N. Laband & Robert D. Tollison, 2000. "Intellectual Collaboration," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 108(3), pages 632-661, June.
    2. Kellie L. Maske & Garey C. Durden & Patricia E. Gaynor, 2003. "Determinants of Scholarly Productivity among Male and Female Economists," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 41(4), pages 555-564, October.
    3. John Hudson, 1996. "Trends in Multi-authored Papers in Economics," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 10(3), pages 153-158, Summer.
    4. Laband, David N., 2002. "Contribution, attribution and the allocation of intellectual property rights: economics versus agricultural economics," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 9(1), pages 125-131, February.
    5. Maxim Engers & Joshua S. Gans & Simon Grant & Stephen King, 1999. "First-Author Conditions," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 107(4), pages 859-883, August.
    6. Hamermesh, Daniel S & Biddle, Jeff E, 1994. "Beauty and the Labor Market," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(5), pages 1174-1194, December.
    7. Marianne Bertrand & Sendhil Mullainathan, 2004. "Are Emily and Greg More Employable Than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(4), pages 991-1013, September.
    8. Matthias Sutter & Martin Kocher, 2004. "Patterns of co-authorship among economics departments in the USA," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 36(4), pages 327-333.
    9. Liran Einav & Leeat Yariv, 2006. "What's in a Surname? The Effects of Surname Initials on Academic Success," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 20(1), pages 175-187, Winter.
    10. Kissan Joseph & David N. Laband & Vivek Patil, 2005. "Author Order and Research Quality," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 71(3), pages 545-555, January.
    11. Moore, William J & Newman, Robert J & Turnbull, Geoffrey K, 2001. "Reputational Capital and Academic Pay," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 39(4), pages 663-671, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Efthyvoulou, Georgios, 2008. "Alphabet Economics: The link between names and reputation," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 37(3), pages 1266-1285, June.
    2. Oswald, Andrew J., 2008. "Can We Test for Bias in Scientific Peer-Review?," IZA Discussion Papers 3665, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Mirjam van Praag & Bernard M.S. van Praag, 2006. "First Author Determinants: An Empirical Analysis," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 03-045/3, Tinbergen Institute.
    2. C. Mirjam Van Praag & Bernard M.S. Van Praag, 2008. "The Benefits of Being Economics Professor A (rather than Z)," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 75(300), pages 782-796, November.
    3. David Ong & Ho Fai Chan & Benno Torgler & Yu (Alan) Yang, 2015. "Endogenous selection into single and coauthorships by surname initials in economics and management," CREMA Working Paper Series 2015-01, Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts (CREMA).
    4. Frandsen, Tove Faber & Nicolaisen, Jeppe, 2010. "What is in a name? Credit assignment practices in different disciplines," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 4(4), pages 608-617.
    5. David Ong & Ho Fai Chan & Benno Torgler & Yu (Alan) Yang, 2015. "Endogenous selection into single and coauthorships by surname initials in economics and management," CREMA Working Paper Series 2015-01, Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts (CREMA).
    6. Ong, David & Chan, Ho Fai & Torgler, Benno & Yang, Yu (Alan), 2018. "Collaboration incentives: Endogenous selection into single and coauthorships by surname initial in economics and management," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 147(C), pages 41-57.
    7. Waltman, Ludo, 2012. "An empirical analysis of the use of alphabetical authorship in scientific publishing," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 6(4), pages 700-711.
    8. Matthias Weber, 2016. "The Effects of Listing Authors in Alphabetical Order: A survey of the Empirical Evidence," Bank of Lithuania Occasional Paper Series 12, Bank of Lithuania.
    9. Hilmer, Christiana E. & Hilmer, Michael J., 2004. "On The Return To Journal Quality, Coauthorship And Author Order Within Top Ranked Agricultural Economics Programs," 2004 Annual meeting, August 1-4, Denver, CO 20179, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    10. Levitt, Jonathan M. & Thelwall, Mike, 2013. "Alphabetization and the skewing of first authorship towards last names early in the alphabet," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 7(3), pages 575-582.
    11. Liran Einav & Leeat Yariv, 2006. "What's in a Surname? The Effects of Surname Initials on Academic Success," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 20(1), pages 175-187, Winter.
    12. Efthyvoulou, Georgios, 2008. "Alphabet Economics: The link between names and reputation," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 37(3), pages 1266-1285, June.
    13. Andrikopoulos, Andreas & Samitas, Aristeidis & Kostaris, Konstantinos, 2016. "Four decades of the Journal of Econometrics: Coauthorship patterns and networks," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 195(1), pages 23-32.
    14. Stan J. Liebowitz, 2014. "Willful Blindness: The Inefficient Reward Structure In Academic Research," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 52(4), pages 1267-1283, October.
    15. Eduardo A. Haddad & Jesus P. Mena-Chalco, Otávio J.G. Sidone, 2016. "Produção Científica e Redes de Colaboração dos Docentes Vinculados aos Programas de Pós-graduação em Economia no Brasil," Working Papers, Department of Economics 2016_10, University of São Paulo (FEA-USP).
    16. Laband, David N., 2002. "Contribution, attribution and the allocation of intellectual property rights: economics versus agricultural economics," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 9(1), pages 125-131, February.
    17. Klaus Wohlrabe & Lutz Bornmann, 2022. "Alphabetized co-authorship in economics reconsidered," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(5), pages 2173-2193, May.
    18. Ishida, Junichiro, 2009. "Incentives in academics: Collaboration under weak complementarities," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(2), pages 215-223, April.
    19. Rauber Michael & Ursprung Heinrich W., 2008. "Life Cycle and Cohort Productivity in Economic Research: The Case of Germany," German Economic Review, De Gruyter, vol. 9(4), pages 431-456, December.
    20. Clive Gaunt & Steven Cahan, 2014. "Accounting and Finance: authorship and citation trends," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 54(2), pages 441-465, June.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    performance measurement; incentives; economists; name ordering;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • A11 - General Economics and Teaching - - General Economics - - - Role of Economics; Role of Economists
    • A14 - General Economics and Teaching - - General Economics - - - Sociology of Economics
    • J32 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Nonwage Labor Costs and Benefits; Retirement Plans; Private Pensions
    • J44 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - Professional Labor Markets and Occupations

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_1948. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Klaus Wohlrabe (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cesifde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.