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

Mirjam Praag and Bernard van Praag

No 2673, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

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.

Keywords: incentives; performance measurement; name ordering; economists (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A11 A14 J32 J44 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 29 pages
Date: 2007-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-hpe and nep-sog
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published - published in: Economica, 2008, 75 (300), 782-796

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp2673.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The Benefits of Being Economics Professor A (and not Z) (2007)
Working Paper: The Benefits of Being Economics Professor A (and not Z) (2007)
Working Paper: The Benefits of Being Economics Professor A (and not Z) (2007)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp2673

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().