Entrepreneurial Optimism in the Market for Technological Inventions
研究了乐观的创业者如何选择披露发明或采用条件支付方案来吸引投资者，揭示了乐观情绪对两种融资方式的不同影响。
How do potentially optimistic entrepreneurs attract prospective investors? We investigate an entrepreneur's decision to pursue either disclosure—where investors inspect the invention—or a contingent payment scheme (CPS) offer (e.g., salary deferral, royalty-based license)—where an invention's value is inferred from the entrepreneur's willingness to make her pay contingent on the invention's success. Using a parsimonious model, we highlight the role of optimism and demonstrate that it only affects CPS ex post. As a result, a novel trade-off unfolds ex ante: In choosing an action that maximizes the valuation of the invention, a moderately wealthy entrepreneur weighs optimism discount (affecting CPS) versus imitation discount (affecting disclosure). More broadly, the paper advances a view of entrepreneurs as optimists, thus departing from the prevailing approach, which characterizes entrepreneurs as opportunistic individuals who consciously pursue self-serving goals.