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Experimentation and project selection: screening and learning

Author

Listed:
  • Gomes, Renato
  • Gottlieb, Daniel
  • Maestri, Lucas

Abstract

Firms must strike a delicate balance between the exploitation of well-known business models and the exploration of risky, untested approaches. In this paper, we study financial contracting between an investor and a firm with private information about its returns from exploration and exploitation. The investor-optimal mechanism offers contracts with different tolerance for failures to screen returns from exploitation, and with different exposure to the project's revenues to screen returns from exploration. We derive necessary and sufficient conditions for private information about returns from exploration to have zero value to the firm. When these conditions fail, private information about exploration may even decrease the firm's payoff.

Suggested Citation

  • Gomes, Renato & Gottlieb, Daniel & Maestri, Lucas, 2016. "Experimentation and project selection: screening and learning," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 102229, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:102229
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    File URL: https://researchonline.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/102229/
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    Cited by:

    1. Xu Tan & Quan Wen, 2020. "Information acquisition and voting with heterogeneous experts," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 51(4), pages 1063-1092, December.
    2. Alessandro Spiganti, 2022. "Wealth Inequality and the Exploration of Novel Alternatives," Working Papers 2022:02, Department of Economics, University of Venice "Ca' Foscari".
    3. Shivam Gupta & Anupam Agrawal & Jennifer K. Ryan, 2023. "Agile contracting: Managing incentives under uncertain needs," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 32(3), pages 972-988, March.
    4. Zhiming Ma & Kirill E. Novoselov & Derrald Stice & Yue Zhang, 2024. "Firm innovation and covenant tightness," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 29(1), pages 151-193, March.
    5. Canidio, Andrea, 2016. "The Value of Entrepreneurial Failures: Task Allocation and Career Concerns," CEPR Discussion Papers 11295, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    6. Yingni Guo, 2016. "Dynamic Delegation of Experimentation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(8), pages 1969-2008, August.
    7. Khalil, Fahad & Lawarree, Jacques & Rodivilov, Alexander, 2020. "Learning from failures: Optimal contracts for experimentation and production," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 190(C).
    8. Canidio, Andrea, 2019. "Task Discretion, Labor Market Frictions and Entrepreneurship," CEPR Discussion Papers 13954, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    9. Alessandro Spiganti, 2020. "Can Starving Start‐ups Beat Fat Labs? A Bandit Model of Innovation with Endogenous Financing Constraint," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 122(2), pages 702-731, April.

    More about this item

    Keywords

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    JEL classification:

    • D21 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Firm Behavior: Theory
    • J33 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Compensation Packages; Payment Methods
    • M12 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Business Administration - - - Personnel Management; Executives; Executive Compensation
    • O31 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Innovation and Invention: Processes and Incentives
    • O34 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Intellectual Property and Intellectual Capital

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