IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ces/ceswps/_12248.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Research Waves

Author

Listed:
  • Mariagiovanna Baccara
  • Gilat Levy
  • Ronny Razin

Abstract

Competing research waves start and grow as scientists choose their specialization driven by career incentives. We build a strategic experimentation framework where agents irreversibly choose between two risky fields, and information arrives faster as more agents specialize in a field. In the "bad news" case, if no news arrives, all agents join a bandwagon wave into one field. In the "good news"' case, both fields are explored in two sequential surges, followed by slow entry into the initially inferior field. We describe how the equilibrium depends on the information-production technology, and assess the impact of first-mover advantages, congestion, and deadlines.

Suggested Citation

  • Mariagiovanna Baccara & Gilat Levy & Ronny Razin, 2025. "Research Waves," CESifo Working Paper Series 12248, CESifo.
    • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12248
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.ifo.de/DocDL/cesifo1_wp12248.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ian W. R. Martin & Robert S. Pindyck, 2015. "Averting Catastrophes: The Strange Economics of Scylla and Charybdis," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(10), pages 2947-2985, October.
    2. Alessandro Lizzeri & Eran Shmaya & Leeat Yariv, 2024. "Disentangling Exploration from Exploitation," Working Papers 334, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Center for Economic Policy Studies..
    3. Michaillat, Pascal & Akerlof, George, 2017. "Beetles: Biased Promotions and Persistence of False Belief," CEPR Discussion Papers 12514, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    4. Dossi, Gaia & Morando, Marta, 2023. "Political ideology and innovation," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 126760, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    5. Gul, Faruk & Lundholm, Russell, 1995. "Endogenous Timing and the Clustering of Agents' Decisions," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 103(5), pages 1039-1066, October.
    6. Elias Einio & Josh Feng & Xavier Jaravel, 2022. "Social push and the direction of innovation," CEP Discussion Papers dp1861, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    7. , & ,, 2010. "Strategic experimentation with Poisson bandits," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 5(2), May.
    8. Jan Knoepfle & Julia Salmi, 2024. "Dynamic Evidence Disclosure: Delay the Good to Accelerate the Bad," Papers 2406.11728, arXiv.org, revised Nov 2025.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Charles I. Jones, 2025. "How Much Should We Spend to Reduce AI's Existential Risk?," NBER Chapters, in: The Economics of Transformative AI, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Boğaçhan Çelen & Kyle Hyndman, 2012. "An experiment of social learning with endogenous timing," Review of Economic Design, Springer;Society for Economic Design, vol. 16(2), pages 251-268, September.
    3. Johannes Hörner & Nicolas Klein & Sven Rady, 2022. "Overcoming Free-Riding in Bandit Games," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 89(4), pages 1948-1992.
    4. Keller, Godfrey & Novák, Vladimír & Willems, Tim, 2019. "A note on optimal experimentation under risk aversion," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 179(C), pages 476-487.
    5. Alexander Frankel & Maximilian Kasy, 2022. "Which Findings Should Be Published?," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 14(1), pages 1-38, February.
    6. Hubert Janos Kiss & Ismael Rodriguez‐Lara & Alfonso Rosa‐García, 2012. "On the Effects of Deposit Insurance and Observability on Bank Runs: An Experimental Study," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 44(8), pages 1651-1665, December.
    7. Pindyck, Robert S., 2019. "The social cost of carbon revisited," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 140-160.
    8. Maria Arvaniti & Chandra K. Krishnamurthy & Anne-Sophie Crépin, 2019. "Time-consistent resource management with regime shifts," CER-ETH Economics working paper series 19/329, CER-ETH - Center of Economic Research (CER-ETH) at ETH Zurich.
    9. Kaustav Das, 2014. "Strategic Experimentation with Competition and Private Arrival of Information," Discussion Papers 1404, University of Exeter, Department of Economics.
    10. Baron, David P., 2002. "Private Politics and Private Policy: A Theory of Boycotts," Research Papers 1766, Stanford University, Graduate School of Business.
    11. Johannes Hörner & Larry Samuelson, 2013. "Incentives for experimenting agents," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 44(4), pages 632-663, December.
    12. Timothy Perri, 2018. "Economics of evaluation (with special reference to promotion and tenure committees)," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 19(1), pages 1-19, February.
    13. Brunnermeier, Markus K. & Morgan, John, 2010. "Clock games: Theory and experiments," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 68(2), pages 532-550, March.
    14. Levin, Dan & Peck, James, 2008. "Investment dynamics with common and private values," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 143(1), pages 114-139, November.
    15. Per-Olov Johansson & Bengt Kriström, 2015. "On the Social Cost of Water-Related Disasters," Water Economics and Policy (WEP), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 1(03), pages 1-26.
    16. Nicolas Klein & Tymofiy Mylovanov, 2011. "Should the Flatterers be Avoided?," 2011 Meeting Papers 1273, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    17. Boyan Jovanovic & Sai Ma, 2023. "Growth through learning," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 50, pages 211-234, October.
    18. Emmanuel Apergis & Nicholas Apergis, 2021. "The impact of COVID-19 on economic growth: evidence from a Bayesian Panel Vector Autoregressive (BPVAR) model," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 53(58), pages 6739-6751, December.
    19. Doruk Cetemen & Can Urgun & Leeat Yariv, 2023. "Collective Progress: Dynamics of Exit Waves," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 131(9), pages 2402-2450.
    20. Tao Wang, 2011. "Dynamic Equilibrium Bunching," Working Paper 1291, Economics Department, Queen's University.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • D7 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12248. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Klaus Wohlrabe (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cesifde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.