Screening for breakthroughs
Theoretical Economics
2025-12-09 v9
Abstract
How best to incentivise prompt disclosure? We study this question in a general model in which a technological breakthrough occurs at an uncertain time and is privately observed by an agent, and a principal must incentivise disclosure via her control of a payoff-relevant physical allocation. We uncover a deadline structure of optimal mechanisms: they have a simple deadline form in an important special case, and a graduated deadline structure in general. We apply our results to the design of unemployment insurance schemes.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2011.10090,
title = {Screening for breakthroughs},
author = {Gregorio Curello and Ludvig Sinander},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2011.10090},
year = {2025}
}