Cooperation royalty contract design in research and development alliances: Help vs. knowledge-sharing

Xinning Yu, Yanfei Lan and Ruiqing Zhao

European Journal of Operational Research, 2018, vol. 268, issue 2, 740-754

Abstract: We study a cooperation royalty contract design problem in a three-party research and development (R&D) alliance: A marketer offers royalty contract to hire innovator A to conduct the research stage of this process and innovator B to conduct the development stage of this process. Both innovators need to exert costly effort, which is unobservable to the marketer. Innovator A may (i) not be involved in the development stage (the non-cooperation contract); (ii) directly help innovator B by exerting effort during the development stage (the help contract); or (iii) share task-related knowledge with innovator B that would lower the latter’s costs (the knowledge-sharing contract). To capture the inherent incentive alignment problems under moral hazard and evaluate the efficiency of cooperation, we compare the efficiency of the non-cooperation contract, the help contract and the knowledge-sharing contract and identify the conditions under which the marketer benefits most. We find that when the efficiency of knowledge-sharing is high, regardless of how efficient help is, the marketer prefers the knowledge-sharing contract. Interestingly, when the efficiency of help is low and the efficiency of knowledge-sharing is moderate, the marketer prefers the help contract. In addition, when the efficiencies of both types of cooperation are low, the non-cooperation contract would benefit the marketer most. Furthermore, for an R&D task with high technical risk, the best strategy for the marketer is to offer the knowledge-sharing contract.

Keywords: Research and development; Contract design; Moral hazard; Help; Knowledge-sharing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ejores:v:268:y:2018:i:2:p:740-754

DOI: 10.1016/j.ejor.2018.01.053

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