First-Mover Advantages versus First-Mover Benefits: What’s the Difference and Why Does It Matter?
区分了先发收益（假设先动者后进入的假想表现）与先发优势（实际观察到的表现差异），指出前者是纯处理效应、后者混杂了选择效应，并用经济模型分析资源与信息不对称如何影响两者偏差。
We present a theoretical framework to address the inherent endogeneity problem in entry-timing research by distinguishing the concept of first-mover benefits (FMB) from first-mover advantages (FMA), the former being a counterfactual and (usually) unobserved pure treatment effect, and the latter being an actual observed combination of treatment and selection effects. They differ in the baseline to which the first mover’s performance is compared – either to the follower’s actual performance (for FMA) or to the first mover’s hypothetical performance if it had been a follower (for FMB). We consider the implications of this distinction for entry-order choices, and our formal economic model analyzes this distinction to make predictions about biases arising from using FMA as a proxy to estimate FMB, and also about how FMA, FMB, and their difference are affected by inter-firm asymmetries in resources and information.