Sharing Credit for Joint Research

Abstract

How can one efficiently share payoffs with collaborators when participating in risky research? First, I show that efficiency can be achieved by allocating payoffs asymmetrically between the researcher who makes a breakthrough ("winner") and the others, even if agents cannot observe others' effort. When the winner's identity is non-contractible, allocating credit based on effort at time of breakthrough also suffices to achieve efficiency; so the terminal effort profile, rather than the full history of effort, is a sufficient statistic. These findings suggest that simple mechanisms using minimal information are robust and effective in addressing inefficiencies in strategic experimentation.