论文标题
通过试验气球发现
Discovery through Trial Balloons
论文作者
论文摘要
委托人和代理人面临着对代理商两个相关项目的价值的对称不确定性。本金选择哪些项目价值观公开发现并向代理商提出建议，他们在预期的价值总数为正时接受且仅在当时接受。我们表征了各种主要偏好的最佳发现：最大化大捆绑包的可能性，至少有一个项目批准以及项目的加权组合。我们的结果突出了试验气球的有用性：前坦不受欢迎但差异比更受青睐的替代方案更高的项目。即使其差异低于替代方案的差异，发现不利的项目也可能是最佳的，只要它们的不足既不太大也不太小。这些结论合理化了综合法案中有争议的政策以及组织中的月球项目的存在。
A principal and an agent face symmetric uncertainty about the value of two correlated projects for the agent. The principal chooses which project values to publicly discover and makes a proposal to the agent, who accepts if and only if the expected sum of values is positive. We characterize optimal discovery for various principal preferences: maximizing the probability of the grand bundle, of having at least one project approved, and of a weighted combination of projects. Our results highlight the usefulness of trial balloons: projects which are ex-ante disfavored but have higher variance than a more favored alternative. Discovering disfavored projects may be optimal even when their variance is lower than that of the alternative, so long as their disfavorability is neither too large nor too small. These conclusions rationalize the inclusion of controversial policies in omnibus bills and the presence of moonshot projects in organizations.
