Paying with information
研究了现金受限的初创企业创始人如何通过承诺未来支付和信息收集来激励和留住代理人，发现均衡结果分为即时学习和渐进学习两种模式，分别对应低补偿和高补偿策略。
The founder of a start‐up (principal) who has a project with uncertain returns must retain and incentivize an agent using promise of future payments and information gathering. The agent's effort incrementally advances production and such advance is a prerequisite for gathering new information. The principal decides how much information to gather based on these incremental advancements. The principal faces cash constraints. The agent's outside option is large relative to his effort cost. Equilibrium features one of two outcomes: immediate learning , whereby the agent's compensation is low, learning is immediate and retention is possible only conditional on the project being of high quality; or gradual learning , whereby the agent's compensation is high, learning is gradual, the agent never quits and effort is inefficiently high.