Document de travail
Researcher's Dilemma
Catherine Bobtcheff, Jérôme Bolte et Thomas Mariotti
IDEI Working Paper
n° 763, février 2013, révision septembre 2015
Référence
Catherine Bobtcheff, Jérôme Bolte et Thomas Mariotti, « Researcher's Dilemma », IDEI Working Paper, n° 763, février 2013, révision septembre 2015.
Résumé
We model academic competition as a game in which researchers ¯ght for priority. Researchers privately experience breakthroughs and decide how long to let their ideas mature before making them public, thereby establishing priority. In a two-researcher, symmetric environment, the resulting preemption game has a unique equilibrium. We study how the shape of the breakthrough distribution affects equilibrium maturation delays. Making researchers better at discovering new ideas or at developing them has contrasted effects on the quality of research outputs. Finally, when researchers have different innovative abilities, speed of discovery and maturation of ideas are positively correlated in equilibrium.
Mots-clés
Academic Competition; Preemption Games; Private Information;
Codes JEL
- C73: Stochastic and Dynamic Games • Evolutionary Games • Repeated Games
- D82: Asymmetric and Private Information • Mechanism Design