Designing Incentives for Heterogeneous Researchers

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Yoder, Nathan
• 署名单位: University System of Georgia; University of Georgia
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF POLITICAL ECONOMY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-3808
• DOI: 10.1086/720072
• 发表日期: 2022
• 页码: 2018-2054
• 关键词: information; monopoly

摘要

A principal (e.g., the US government) contracts with a researcher with unknown costs (e.g., a vaccine developer) to conduct a costly experiment. This contracting problem has a novel feature that captures the difference between the form of an experiment and the strength of its results: researchers face a problem of information design rather than optimal effort. Using a novel comparative static for Bayesian persuasion settings, I characterize the optimal contract and show how experimentation is distorted by the need to screen researchers. Moreover, I show that there is no loss from contracting on the experiment's result rather than the experiment itself.