Good to Go First? Position Order Effects in Expert Evaluation of Early-Stage Ventures

20 Pages Posted: 31 Dec 2019

See all articles by Jiang Bian

Jiang Bian

Stanford University

Jason Greenberg

University of Pennsylvania; Cornell SC Johnson College of Business

Jizhen Li

Tsinghua University - School of Economics & Management

Yanbo Wang

University of Hong Kong

Date Written: November 8, 2019

Abstract

There is considerable anxiety and conflicting advice concerning the benefits of presenting/being evaluated first. In this paper, we investigate how randomly assigned expert evaluators vary in their evaluations of pitches, based on position order, in the premiere innovation fund competition in Beijing, China. In this research: (a) the prize money at stake is economically meaningful. (b) Evaluators with different professional backgrounds are randomly assigned to evaluate pitches individually, with scores then averaged for the purpose of selecting grantees. (c) The evaluations observed in this setting result in funding that is non-zero-sum as funds are doled-out based on cumulative scores until all available funds for a particular year are allocated. (d) We also obtained and coded granular measures of the firms’ pre-pitch performance metrics used by the evaluators in their judgments. As this written material was the sole basis of evaluation used by the experts — in contrast with the persuasiveness of oral or live sports/musical presentations that may vary considerably across performances and which may be impacted by (even random) performance order — we have a compelling context to assess evaluation order effects. We can and do also estimate firm and evaluator fixed effects models that yield consistent findings. Overall, we find that an applicant that is evaluated first needs net profits in the top fifth percentile to merely equal the evaluation of an applicant in the bottom first percentile that is not evaluated first.

Keywords: Social evaluation, entrepreneurship, innovation, venture capital

Suggested Citation

Bian, Jiang and Greenberg, Jason and Li, Jizhen and Wang, Yanbo, Good to Go First? Position Order Effects in Expert Evaluation of Early-Stage Ventures (November 8, 2019). NYU Stern School of Business, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3495639 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3495639

Jiang Bian

Stanford University ( email )

Stanford, CA 94305
United States

Jason Greenberg (Contact Author)

University of Pennsylvania ( email )

Pennsylvania, PA
United States

HOME PAGE: http://www.j-greenberg.com

Cornell SC Johnson College of Business ( email )

Ithaca, NY 14850
United States

Jizhen Li

Tsinghua University - School of Economics & Management ( email )

Beijing, 100084
China

Yanbo Wang

University of Hong Kong ( email )

Pokfulam Road
Hong Kong, Pokfulam HK
China

HOME PAGE: http://https://www.hkubs.hku.hk/people/yanbo-wang/

Do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on SSRN?

Paper statistics

Downloads
374
Abstract Views
1,687
Rank
169,795
PlumX Metrics