What is the best way to reward innovation? While prizes avoid deadweight loss, intellectual property selects high social surplus projects. Optimal innovation policy thus trades off the ex-ante screening benefit and the ex-post distortion. It solves a multidimensional screening problem in the...

We consider innovation contests for the procurement of an innovation under moral hazard and adverse selection. Innovators have private information about their abilities, and choose unobservable effort in order to produce innovations of random quality. Innovation quality is not contractible. We...

I study the impact of capital market imperfections on the exercise of a real option. An entrepreneur has private information about a venture for which she seeks outside funding. An initial investment gives access to a continuous flow of information about the project. The duration of that...

This study develops a general equilibrium model within which self revelation of ability - that is not accompanied by any signaling - is compatible with arrival at rational expectations equilibriums (REE). In the model, economic agents either are 'confident', 'overconfident', or 'under-confident'...

We develop a framework in which: (i) a firm can have a new product tested publicly before launch; and (ii) tests vary in toughness, holding expertise fixed. Price flexibility boosts the strong positive impact on consumer beliefs of passing a tough test and mitigates the strong negative impact of...

Deadlines are common in product development and are often felt to be too harsh - many development efforts are still worth continuing at the time of mandated termination. We examine the value of deadlines from the agency-theoretic perspective. We consider a firm that pays an agent to lead product...

I study the impact of capital market imperfections on the exercise of a real option. An entrepreneur has private information about a venture for which she seeks outside funding. An initial investment gives access to a continuous flow of information about the project. The duration of that...

This paper analyzes the effect of innovation clusters on the adoption of a gen- eral purpose technology (GPT) and on firms R&D investment levels in im- perfect information situation. To do this, we developed a theoretical model of vertical relation, described as a four-step game between an...