In a model of project design, evaluation, and selection, we explore how the incentives to improve the design of projects depend on the availability of funding and the process of evaluation. We show that project designers (researchers or NGOs) prefer to subject their projects to less-rigorous...

Challenge funds (CF) induce competition between grant applicants as they develop proposals to address important social problems. We develop a game theoretic model to study how funding availability and proof of concept requirements (e.g., pilots or other forms of early stage screening) influence...