Making Waves: To Innovate or Be a Fast Second?
研究了内部融资导致创新博弈陷入僵局，而外部融资（如风险资本）会带来延迟成本，并刻画了创新浪潮中领先者和追随者的规模分布及质量随时间的变化。
Abstract Internal finance leads to a stalemate in innovation games; each firm wants to free-ride on the others’ costly experimentation. When instead innovation is financed externally (e.g., with venture capital or initial public offerings), there is an endogenous cost to delay. Waiting to make risky irreversible investment conveys pessimistic information. I characterize the relative sizes of waves of leaders and followers in innovation cycles, and the endogenous, intertemporal distribution of quality as each wave builds and crashes. Finally, old waves leave an adverse selection “hangover,” such that too much early innovation can cause the market for future innovation to break down.