A principal seeks to learn about a binary state and can do so by enlisting an agent to acquire information over time using a Poisson information arrival technology. The agent learns about this state privately, and his effort choices are unobserved by the principal. The principal can reward the agent with a prize of fixed value as a function of the agent's sequence of reports and the realized state. We identify conditions that each individually ensure that the principal cannot do better than by eliciting a single report from the agent after all information has been acquired. We also show that such a static contract is suboptimal under sufficiently strong violations of these conditions. We contrast our solution to the case where the agent acquires information "all at once;" notably, the optimal contract in the dynamic environment may provide strictly positive base rewards to the agent even if his prediction about the state is incorrect.

翻译：一位委托人试图了解一个二元状态，为此可以雇佣一个代理人，通过泊松信息到达技术随时间推移获取信息。代理人私下了解这一状态，且其努力选择无法被委托人观测。委托人可根据代理人的报告序列及最终实现的状态，给予固定价值的奖励。我们确定了若干条件，每个条件单独都足以保证：委托人无法通过比代理人在获取全部信息后提交单一报告更好的方式实现目标。我们还证明，若这些条件被充分强烈地违反，则此类静态契约将成为次优选择。我们将所得解与代理人"一次性"获取信息的情形进行对比；值得注意的是，动态环境下的最优契约即使代理人对状态的预测有误，也可能为其提供严格为正的基础奖励。