ECONOMICS SEMINAR SERIES (ESS) - 2025/2026

Speaker: Gilat Levy (LSE)

Title: Research Waves

Abstract: Competing research waves start and grow as scientists choose their specialization driven by career incentives. We build a strategic experimentation framework where agents irreversibly choose between two risky fields, and information arrives faster as more agents specialize in a field. In the bad news case, if no news arrives, all agents join a band-wagon wave into one field. In the good news case, fields are explored in two sequential surges, followed by slow entry into the initially inferior field. We describe how the equilibrium depends on the information-production technology, and assess the impact of first-mover advantages, congestion, and deadlines.