In what order should coauthors be listed on journal articles? The norm in the economics profession is to order them alphabetically. Our examination of 42 leading economics journals for the last 21 years finds that articles not following this norm are shorter (by 3.2 percent), published in less prestigious journals (by 5.0 percent), and receiving fewer citations (by 9.1 percent). This association survives various identification checks. Our findings shed light on how teamwork incentives interplay with social norms — in this case, a deviance from the alphabetic norm punishes alphabetically early members more than it rewards alphabetically late members.

期刊论文应以何种顺序列出合著者？经济学界的规范是按字母顺序排列它们。我们对过去21年中的42种主要经济学期刊的研究发现，不遵循该规范的文章较短（减少了3.2％），在不太负盛名的期刊上发表了（减少了5.0％），被引用的次数也减少了（减少9.1％）。该关联可以经受各种身份检查。我们的发现揭示了团队合作动机与社会规范之间的相互作用-在这种情况下，背离字母规范对按字母顺序排列的早期成员的惩罚大于对按字母顺序排列的晚期成员的奖励。