background and objective: over the recent years, genetically modified food in varieties of corn, soybeans, canola and cotton have been introduced to the global market. this study reviews the health and nutritional value of genetically modified foods in the past two decades. results and conclusions: contrary to the present biotechnological claims, transgenic products did not prove to be so flawl...

We consider a multi-armed bandit model in which two players choose between learning about the quality of a risky option (modelled as a Poisson process with unknown arrival rate), and competing for the use of a single shared safe option that can only be used by one agent at the time. Firstly, when players cannot reverse their decision to switch to the safe option, the socially optimal policy mak...

We study the design of approval rules when experimentation must be delegated to an agent with misaligned preferences with an application to FDA decision rules. Consider a dynamic learning relationship in which an agent experiments on a project, submitting the outcomes without concealment or distortion to a principal who must decide to approve or reject the project. The agent bears the cost of e...

In many economic environments, agents often continue to learn about the same underlying state variable, even if they switch action. For example, a worker’s ability revealed in one job is informative about her productivity in another job. We analyze a general setup of experimentation with common values, and show that the value of experimentation must be equal whenever the agent switches action. ...

This paper examines experimentation and innovation when experimental results diffuse along social links. This public-goods nature of experimentation is a feature of many areas of economics, such as consumer choice, research and development, and agriculture. The paper asks: How do different patterns of social and geographic links affect experimentation? Who experiments and who free rides? Do mor...

We consider a model in which two players choose between learning about the quality of a risky option (modelled as a Poisson process with unknown arrival rate), and competing for the use of a single shared safe option that can only be used by one agent at a time. Firstly, when players cannot reverse their decision to switch to the safe option, the socially optimal policy makes them experiment fo...