Contracting with heterogeneous researchers

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Wang, Han
• 署名单位: University System of Ohio; Ohio State University
• 刊物名称: GAMES AND ECONOMIC BEHAVIOR
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0899-8256
• DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2024.12.008
• 发表日期: 2025
• 页码: 278-294
• 关键词: Adverse selection; Bayesian persuasion; information acquisition

摘要

We study the design of contracts that incentivize a researcher to conduct a costly experiment, extending the work of Yoder (2022) from binary states to a general state space. The cost is information of the researcher. When the experiment is observable, we find the optimal contract and show that higher types choose more costly experiments, but not necessarily more Blackwell informative ones. When only the experiment result is observable, the principal can still the same optimal outcome if and only if a certain monotonicity condition with respect to holds. Our analysis demonstrates that the general case is qualitatively different than the one, but that the contracting problem remains tractable.