Score contribution per author:
α: calibrated so average coauthorship-adjusted count equals average raw count
Salaries of academic economists are studied to determine if individuals receive differential returns to publishing articles of varying quality and to coauthored versus single-authored articles. Estimates based on detailed data and a flexible nonlinear least-squares procedure indicate that substantial returns to quality exist and that an individual's return from a coauthored paper with n authors is approximately 1/n times that of a single-authored paper. Copyright 1988 by University of Chicago Press.