Do scholars in Economics and Finance react to alphabetical discrimination?

Prior literature has documented that the academic success of scholars in Economics partially depends on their surname initials' position in the alphabet. This alphabetical discrimination is said to be mainly triggered by the alphabetical name-ordering rule prevalent in scholarly journals. We test whether scholars react to alphabetical discrimination for Economics as well as for Finance, where such discrimination has hitherto not been analyzed. We show that Economics scholars late in the alphabet seem to react to alphabetical discrimination as they refrain from publishing articles with three or more authors. In Finance, however, we do not find evidence of strategic co-authoring. (C) 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.