Strategic information revelation and revenue sharing in an R&D race

Firms learn imperfectly about their cost of investment. We study how this information affects firms’ incentives to invest in R&D by comparing investments and profits under public and private information. Revenue sharing between the winner and loser of the race, e.g. through licensing contracts, weakens the appropriability of the innovation’s revenues, and creates free- rider effects. These free-rider effects not only soften R&D competition, but also affect the firms’ incentives to acquire and reveal information. How much information firms eventually reveal, and consequently the information acquisition and innovation incentives, also depends on the verifiability of information.