According to Google’s Matt Cutts, author’s authority was used by Google for in-depth articles, along with the rel=”author” markup (the authorship program was shut down by Google in 2014)

Matt Cutts confirmed on Twitter that Google uses the author ranking, or authority, for in-depth articles. If you built your authorship over years on generic trusted websites such as LinkedIn or Quora, and on industry-specific websites (i.e. MOZ or SEL, in the SEO industry), all other SEO factors being equal, the authority of the content creator will provide an edge:

@marktraphagen to be fair, it does come into play in some ways. For example, in-depth articles use that data, I'm pretty sure.

— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) March 12, 2014