And just as Mr. Plotz and Mr. Douthat confused the author ordering, so too did Martin Sandbu, an economics columnist for The Financial Times, as did The New York Times’s Gina Kolata, who called this research “the Deaton-Case analysis.” This may reflect the journalistic tendency to follow the more exciting narrative, and Mr. Deaton’s recent Nobel Prize certainly made him a newsworthy figure. But even Paul Krugman, who made his reputation as an economist rather than as a journalist, and who spent many years as a colleague of Ms. Case and Mr. Deaton at Princeton, made the same mistake in his column in The New York Times.

Now perhaps this isn’t a trend of underweighting the contribution of female economists, but rather a handful of careless mistakes. Eager to learn more, I reached out to the male halves of these power couples, to find out if they had ever been inadvertently demoted to second-author status, or otherwise been given insufficient credit. Mr. Katz said that such mistakes were rare, but that in his experience, it was less likely that he be given insufficient credit than Ms. Goldin.

Mr. Akerlof responded, “No, I cannot recall ever being slighted in this way.” And Mr. Deaton said, “I can’t recall a case where I was slighted or given less than my due.” He also told me that he thought that this sort of problem “was not good for women in science, nor domestic harmony (or even Anne’s willingness to work with me).” His assessment of the problem: “I think it is real enough.”

The accumulation of these slights suggests that even the world’s best female economists are given second billing too often. And none of this is intended to impugn the motives of any economic commentator. Rather, I suspect that there’s a simple unconscious bias at work here. Close your eyes for a moment, and picture an economist. Odds are you pictured a man. (Chances are, he was also white, most likely middle-aged, and probably fairly confident.) This same reflex makes it easier to recall those who fit this pre-conceived idea of what an economist looks like.

Of course, I have an interest in this, as I’m also partnered with a fellow economist. And so I can add one more story to this list. Anne-Marie Slaughter published a widely read article in The Atlantic on “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All.” My better half, Betsey Stevenson, was pleased to see our joint research described in the article, but was chagrined to discover Ms. Slaughter had demoted her from first to second author on the paper. At the time Ms. Slaughter’s article was published, Betsey was serving as chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor, where she had developed a much larger footprint on work-family balance issues than I ever had.

It left Betsey to suggest — only half-jokingly — that the reason women can’t have it all is because even leading feminists don’t give them credit.