  How can one efficiently share payoffs with collaborators when participating
in risky research? First, I show that efficiency can be achieved by allocating
payoffs asymmetrically between the researcher who makes a breakthrough
("winner") and the others, even if agents cannot observe others' effort. When
the winner's identity is non-contractible, allocating credit based on effort at
time of breakthrough also suffices to achieve efficiency; so the terminal
effort profile, rather than the full history of effort, is a sufficient
statistic. These findings suggest that simple mechanisms using minimal
information are robust and effective in addressing inefficiencies in strategic
experimentation.
