When to Sell Your Idea: Theory and Evidence from the Movie Industry
研究了创意投资与出售的模型，利用电影创意市场数据发现，买家不愿接触早期创意的无经验卖家，迫使卖家要么完全开发要么放弃；而有经验卖家可随时吸引买家，并更早出售较差创意、较晚出售更好创意。
I study a model of investment and sale of ideas and test its empirical implications using a novel data set from the market for original movie ideas. Consistent with the theoretical results, I find that buyers are reluctant to meet unproven sellers for early-stage ideas, which restricts sellers to either developing the ideas fully (to sell them later) or abandoning them. In contrast, experienced sellers can attract buyers at any stage, and they sell worse ideas sooner and better ideas later. These results have important managerial implications for buyers and sellers and show that, in such contexts, policy interventions that discourage buyer participation—such as stronger intellectual property protection—may diminish the market for ideas and hurt inexperienced sellers. This paper was accepted by Bruno Cassiman, business strategy.