The recent guidelines Google released about Panda, focus on identifying expert, quality and authority sites they can trust. If Google knows that an author is an expert and they can verify that that author is writing for your site, it could increase the authority of your site in Google's eyes. Many authors have the same name, so it is difficult for Google to verify if an author is who they think they are, but if the author is attached to a bio about them, then they will have a better chance of verifying they are who Google thinks they are. This seems ripe for possible abuse, but as of now Google says it can only be used for your own site and is not cross domain. http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/05/more-guidance-on-building-high-quality.html