Gross, Daniel2016-03-242016-06-27Gross, Daniel P. "Performance Feedback in Competitive Product Development." RAND Journal of Economics 48, no. 2 (Summer 2017): 438–466. (Was Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 16-110, March 2016. Revised June 2016.)0741-6261http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:26211017Performance feedback is ubiquitous in competitive settings where new products are developed. This paper introduces a fundamental tension between incentives and improvement in the provision of feedback. Using a sample of four thousand commercial logo design tournaments, I show that feedback reduces participation but improves the quality of subsequent submissions, with an ambiguous effect on high-quality output. To evaluate this tradeoff, I develop a procedure to estimate agents' effort costs and simulate counterfactuals under alternative feedback policies. The results suggest that feedback on net increases the number of high-quality ideas produced and is thus desirable for a principal seeking innovation.en-USJournal Article2016-03-2410.1111/1756-2171.12182/abstract