On the Causal Effect of Fame on Citations

We find that economics papers whose first authors are famous have more citations than papers whose second or third authors are famous. Author order is alphabetical so these additional citations are unrelated to underlying quality. The magnitudes we find are large: a two-author paper written by the most prolific author in economics and his research assistant receives, on average, 204 more citations if the prolific author is first rather than second. We find even larger fame effects between first and not-first authors among three author papers which suggests that burying a famous author in the “et al” reduces citations even further.