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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Wu, Nicholas
Format: Preprint
Published: 2023
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.12104
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author Wu, Nicholas
author_facet Wu, Nicholas
contents How can one efficiently share payoffs with collaborators when participating in risky research? First, I show that efficiency can be achieved by allocating payoffs asymmetrically between the researcher who makes a breakthrough ("winner") and the others, even if agents cannot observe others' effort. When the winner's identity is non-contractible, allocating credit based on effort at time of breakthrough also suffices to achieve efficiency; so the terminal effort profile, rather than the full history of effort, is a sufficient statistic. These findings suggest that simple mechanisms using minimal information are robust and effective in addressing inefficiencies in strategic experimentation.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2307_12104
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Sharing Credit for Joint Research
Wu, Nicholas
Theoretical Economics
How can one efficiently share payoffs with collaborators when participating in risky research? First, I show that efficiency can be achieved by allocating payoffs asymmetrically between the researcher who makes a breakthrough ("winner") and the others, even if agents cannot observe others' effort. When the winner's identity is non-contractible, allocating credit based on effort at time of breakthrough also suffices to achieve efficiency; so the terminal effort profile, rather than the full history of effort, is a sufficient statistic. These findings suggest that simple mechanisms using minimal information are robust and effective in addressing inefficiencies in strategic experimentation.
title Sharing Credit for Joint Research
topic Theoretical Economics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.12104