I investigate whether wealth inequality hinders the discovery of novel technologies in a competitive screening model. Agents can engage in exploration, which may lead to the discovery of superior technologies, but it is likely to waste time with inferior ones. Talented agents are better at weeding out inferior technologies, but talent is unobservable by lenders. When agents are poor, this causes an adverse selection problem whereby exploration is pursued by untalented agents rather than by talented ones. As economies become wealthier, the misallocation problem of talented agents weakens. Higher inequality worsens this misallocation problem when the economy is wealthy, but can increase efficiency in poor economies.

中文翻译：

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财富不平等与新技术探索

我调查了财富不平等是否阻碍了竞争性筛选模型中新技术的发现。代理人可以进行探索，这可能会导致发现更先进的技术，但很可能会浪费时间在劣等技术上。有才华的代理人更擅长淘汰劣质技术，但贷方无法观察到人才。当代理人很穷时，这会导致逆向选择问题，即由没有才能的代理人而不是有才华的代理人进行探索。随着经济变得更加富裕，有才能的代理人的分配不当问题就会减弱。当经济富裕时，更高的不平等加剧了这种分配不当的问题，但可以提高贫穷经济体的效率。