This paper studies a two-stage R&D race, in which, at the outset, firms are uncertain regarding the viability of the project. Learning through experimentation introduces a bilateral (dynamic) feedback mechanism. For relatively low-value products, the equilibrium cutoff belief coincides with the...

We show that venture capitalists' (VCs) on-site involvement with their portfolio companies leads to an increase in (1) innovation and (2) the likelihood of a successful exit. We rule out selection effects by exploiting an exogenous source of variation in VC involvement: the introduction of new...

Established firms accumulate a significant body of knowledge, expertise and capabilities that are often secondary to their central revenue generating activities. How do they leverage this expertise in non-core technology into future value creation opportunities? In this paper we examine an...

This paper studies a game of strategic experimentation in which the players have access to two-armed bandits where the risky arm distributes lump-sum payoffs according to a Poisson process with unknown intensity. Because of free-riding, there is an inefficiently low level of experimentation in...

This paper studies a game of strategic experimentation with two-armed bandits whose risky arm might yield a payoff only after some exponentially distributed random time. Because of free-riding, there is an inefficiently low level of experimentation in any equilibrium where the players use...

We conducted laboratory experiments to investigate how private and public information affect the selection and timing of technology adoption. Our experiments extend the standard herding model to more accurately represent the innovation decision problem. Subjects drew private signals and observed...

This paper introduces a new mechanism through which positive externality spills over in a network. We find that the introduction of the new spillover mechanism plays a major role in reducing the set of Nash equilibrium though at the same time it increases the set of stable equilibria in a...

A popular argument about economic policy under uncertainty states that decentralisation offers the possibility to learn from local or regional policy experiments. We argue that such learning processes are not trivial and do not occur frictionlessly: Voters have an inherent tendency to retain a...