Contribution, attribution and the allocation of intellectual property rights: economics versus agricultural economics

Abstract

In this paper, I compare several readily observable measures of intellectual property rights between agricultural economics—a discipline that attaches considerable importance to author order—and economics—a discipline that attaches little, if any, importance to author order. Specifically, I examine: (1) the incidence of coauthorship—i.e., the likelihood that an individual coauthors with others, (2) the extent of coauthorship—i.e., the number of authors listed on each coauthored paper, (3) the number of individuals thanked for contributing to the research being reported and (4) alphabetization of authorship for papers published in three top journals in each scientific discipline. I find statistically significant differences across-the-board. These differences suggest that interdisciplinary differences with respect to the relative importance attached to contribution affect the allocation of intellectual property rights in science. These findings are compelling because they demonstrate that the allocation of intellectual property rights and how the production of science is structured are related.