Thursday, April 13, 2006

Why Warnicks Fail

I'm always on the look out for excuses to explain my future flop. Here is a good one, via Kevin Drum:
ALPHABETICAL TYRANNY....Alex Tabarrok reports that alphabetical privilege is real — in the world of economics, anyway:
A new paper (free, working version, Winter 06, JEP) demonstrates that...faculty members in top departments with surnames beginning with letters earlier in the alphabet are substantially more likely to be tenured, be fellows of the Econometrics Society, and even win Nobel prizes (let's see, Arrow, Buchanan Coase...hmmm). No such effects are found in psychology where the alphabetical norm is not followed.

The "alphabetical norm" is the rule that coauthors on a paper are listed alphabetically, which results in only alphabetically privileged authors getting citation credits (everyone else is "et al"). The paper demonstrating the effect was written by Liran Einav and some other guy.


Bryan

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Sorry to read that you'll always be "some other guy."

I'm glad you finally updated the page. Speaking for the common folk, I would like to see a newer pic of the family posted on the blog. Not meaning to imply that I don't enjoy your intellectual prowess, but I like the books that have an occasional picture!

Anonymous said...

Well I was about to say "HA HA" when I saw that psych departments don't follow the alphabetical norm. Dang. There goes my potential academic advantage.

Nick