Homo Oeconomicus Alpha

Hurry! Put it on paper!

In economics, published work and the resulting citations are part of what drives the Nobel Prize selection process. Citations, in turn, depend on you having published something noteworthy and of your name being associated with it. The more citations, the higher your standing. As Paul Samuelson put it, the only coin of worth among economists is the recognition by one's colleagues.

But, as CESifo researcher Bernard M.S. van Praag and his colleague C. Mirjam van Praag point out in their latest CESifo Working Paper, your coin can get swiftly devalued if your visibility is buried under the conventions of co-authorship.

The problem stems from a combination of the ease with which papers can be written jointly with other authors and the convention for listing the respective authors. The advent of internet-enabled communication technologies and the success of international research networks have made it easy for economists to write papers jointly with other academics sitting on the other side of the world.

A gentlemen's agreement had then to be reached regarding the sequence in which the writers of multi-authored papers are listed. In order to make it as neutral as possible, often the convention is made use of that authors are listed alphabetically.

Fine so far. But it emerges that this type of listing biases searches and citations towards authors whose surnames start with the first letters of the alphabet. The van Praag team decided to test, using econometric tools, how true and how detrimental this bias really is.

First, they observed that, unlike in other disciplines, where authors are listed according to merit (contribution to the paper, academic reputation, hierarchy and so on), in economics around 85% of multi-authored papers use alphabetic name ordering. This already has one implication: non-economists from disciplines that use merit-based name ordering tend to perceive “first authors” in economics journals as the authors with the highest contributions.

Second, citation indices have for a long time counted only the names of first authors, packing the co-authors behind a concealing “et al.”. Third, citations within articles are also shortened to “first-author et al.” as soon as there are more than two authors.

Finally, frequently used search engines such as EconLit merely reveal the name of the first author for articles with more than three authors.

The next step was to measure the magnitude of such an effect in their discipline. And indeed they found significant effects of the alphabetic rank of an economist's last name on scientific production. The growth rate of an economist's number of publications increases marginally faster over the year than for those whose names rank lower in the alphabet. Being a top-of-the-alphabet author —and thereby often the first author listed— is beneficial for that author's reputation and academic performance.

The question then begs itself of whether the authors know that name ordering matters —and, if so, what they are ready to do about it. Well, it turns out that authors do consider the effect of inequality of merit among co-authors: increased inequality raises the likelihood of using merit-based name ordering rather than the alphabetic option. In such cases, name ordering, not surprisingly, turns out to be not random.

The van Praag team suggests another, fairly easy way to terminate the discrimination against bottom-of-the-alphabet authors: journal editors should take (random) name ordering decisions, and make such decisions public information.

The breadth and scope of the van Praag team's research shows that academic output, quantified by the number of publications and citations, does tend to benefit top-of-the-alphabet economists in the case of many-authored articles. This, in turn, influences career prospects, reputation, salary increases, promotions and outside offers. But, is that enough for a Nobel prize?

Let's see. A very unscientific but thoroughly empirical review conducted by us showed that, while barely three people with surnames starting southward of the T (7 letters altogether) have gone to be feted in Stockholm (if we allot von Hayek to "H" and not to "V"), thirteen have done so with surnames from the top 7 letters of the alphabet.

The middle stretch is like a roller-coaster, with 8 starting with "M", 6 with "K" and 5 with "H", but none or less than three for the rest. The exception —and absolute winner— is the rather southwardly-located letter "S", with no less than 14 laureates (maybe they write alone, without co-authors?). [See impromptu chart here]

Can you think of any prolific academics starting with "S" who might well start shopping for suitable tailcoats and white ties?

Bernard M.S. van Praag & C. Mirjam van Praag: The Benefits of Being Economics Professor A (and not Z) , CESifo Working Paper No. 1948.

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