TY  - RPRT
CY  - Toulouse.
ID  - publications43234
UR  - http://tse-fr.eu/pub/125474
A1  - Bobtcheff, Catherine
A1  - Levy, Raphaël
A1  - Mariotti, Thomas
Y1  - 2021/04//
N2  - Two players receiving independent signals on a risky project with common value compete to be the rst to innovate. We characterize the equilibrium of this preemption game as the publicity of signals varies. Private signals create a winner's curse:investing rst implies that the rival has abstained from investing, possibly because he has privately received adverse information about the project. Since players want to gather more evidence in support of the project as a compensation, they invest later when signals are more likely to be private. Because of preemption, the NPV of investment is zero at equilibrium regardless of the publicity of signals. However, for a conservative planner who cares about avoiding unprotable investments, this implies that investment arises too early at equilibrium, and such a planner then prefers signals to be private. This provides a rationale against the mandatory disclosure of negative results in science, notably when competition is severe. Our results suggest that policy interventions should primarily tackle winner-takes-all competition, and regulate
transparency only once competition is suciently mild.
PB  - TSE Working Paper
T3  - TSE Working Paper
M1  - working_paper
TI  - Negative results in science: blessing or (winner’s) curse
AV  - public
EP  - 41
ER  -