Competition in sponsored research leads to inefficient outcomes, study finds.
The article explores a game where players make decisions based on observations and payoffs that depend on each other. The researchers analyze two models related to sponsored research projects, where success or failure affects funding or rewards. They find that in competitive scenarios, neither the outcomes nor cooperative solutions are efficient unless there are no external payoffs. In both models, at least one player experiments for too long, leading to inefficient results. This suggests that stopping funding earlier could be beneficial in grant competitions.