Comments on the willingness of an economic agency to pay for parallel research efforts

An analysis of the willingness of a risk-neutral decision-taker to pay for a parallel research strategy is undertaken. The results, which are based on the management science/operational research literature about the value of information, examine the relationship between this willingness to pay and the statistical moments of the distribution of research outcomes. Only the benefits are considered in studying the above-mentioned problem in a non-traditional economic approach. More precisely, the case of the winner-takes-all is studied to evaluate the willingness to pay for a parallel strategy rather than for a non-parallel one. Upper bounds on the willingness to pay are computed and analysed with respect to the distribution of research outcomes.