Sharing Credit for Joint Research

Nicholas Wu

Papers from arXiv.org

Abstract: 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.

Date: 2023-07, Revised 2024-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-gth and nep-mic
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